In 1961, Nazis were on trial for World War II war crimes. They maintained that they were only doing what they were told to do, and that they held no responsibility for their actions. This was the premise for a study done by Professor Stanley Milgram of Yale University, who was Jewish. He recruited volunteers for a "punishment and learning" study to determine if people were more likely to obey orders against their moral judgment.
The Milgram Experiment–-A Study of Obedience to Authority
Milgram repeated his study about twenty times. Two volunteers would arrive for the study and draw their positions out of a hat. One would be the teacher and the other the learner. The teacher would sit in a room with the experimenter, who was an authority figure in a white lab coat, and the learner would sit in a room by himself. The teacher would give the learner shocks in increasing voltages. At first, the learner would react with verbal protests, then yelling, and then pounding on the wall. With the higher voltages, the learner would beg to be released from the experiment.
The learner would actually be an actor. Both of the experiment positions in the hat were marked "teacher," but the actor would say that he had the role of learner each time. This way, the volunteer would always be the teacher, and the actor the learner. The learner did not really receive shocks, but followed scripted reactions to each shock cue.
As the shock voltages increased, the teacher would reach a point where he would demonstrate discomfort and hesitate to continue with the experiment. At first, the experimenter would simply tell the teacher to continue, and he would.
According to the 2005 book Expanding Horizons in Bioethics, by Arthur William Galston and Christiana Z. Peppard, 65 percent of obedient participants administered the maximum of 450 volts. Many argue that people are different, today, and that a repeat study would not yield the same results.
ABC News' Primetime Replicated the Milgram Obedience Study
The ABC News show, Primetime, replicated the Milgram obedience experiment with Santa Clara University. They consulted with the American Psychological Association regarding their protocol so as to adhere to ethical standards.
Primetime selected 70 people to participate in "a learning and memory study." These participants were given $50 and were told that they could keep the money even if they did not complete the experiment.
Prior to the experiment, the learner would tell the teacher that he had heart trouble. They would then sit in their respective rooms and begin the experiment. The teacher would teach word pairs to the learner. When the learner got a word pair wrong, the teacher would shock the learner, starting with the lowest voltage.
According to the January 3, 2007 Primetime article, "Basic Instincts: The Science of Evil–'Primetime' Re-Creates a Famous Experiment to Understand How Ordinary People Can Perform Unthinkable Acts," by Caroline Borge, the learner's actions were predetermined and she described the interactions of a particular teacher and learner pair.
At 75 volts, the learner would begin shouting in pain and the teacher would become uncomfortable. This continued until 150 volts when the learner would plead, "Get me out of here. I told you I had heart trouble. My heart's starting to bother me." At this point, the teacher would look at the experimenter who would tell him to continue. He continued.
Primetime found that the typical response was the look to the experimenter for direction when the learner protested. After all, the experimenter was an authority figure and expert. They found that women were more likely to continue following orders than men. Seventy-three percent of women chose to continue administering shocks compared with only 63 percent of men. Eight-three percent of the participants were college-educated ranging from some college experience to master's degrees.
Upon completion of the experiment, the teacher said that he was not comfortable administering the shocks and should have stopped. According to Borge, when the teacher was asked why he didn't stop administering the shocks, he said, "I was doing what I was supposed to do, and I'm there to help conduct an experiment."
The Stanley Milgram Experiment and Research Ethics
According to the 2008 Experiment Resources article, "Milgram Experiment Ethics," by Martyn Shuttleworth, "Modern ethical standards assert that participants in any experiment must not be deceived, and that they must be made aware of any consequences." The reason is to protect the participants from "severe emotional distress." Other studies, such as the Stanford Prison Experiment, have "caused measurable psychological distress to the participants…for several months or years." Fortunately, this was not the case with the Milgram experiment.
Diane Ursu - Diane Ursu joined Suite101 as a contributing writer in August 2009 and became a Feature Writer in January 2010. She is a freelance writer ...
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