Psychology. History offers haunting examples of humanity’s darker instincts, none more chilling than the blind compliance that fuelled Nazi Germany. Ordinary people, some no different from your neighbours or colleagues, became cogs in a machine that executed unspeakable horrors. How could they carry out orders so grotesquely at odds with basic morality? It’s not just history’s question, it’s humanity’s. From war crimes to corporate corruption, blind obedience echoes through time. What drives people to surrender their judgment, even when lives are on the line? The answer most likely lies buried in the tangled web of psychology, authority, and fear.
Stanley Milgram, interested in the enigma of obedience, decided to seek a deeper understanding of its existence. Around 60 years ago he conducted one of the most significant and controversial experiments in the history of psychology. Designed to explore obedience to authority, the experiment revealed unsettling truths about human behaviour and our capacity to inflict harm under the influence of authority figures. While the study has contributed immensely to understanding social psychology, it has also sparked ongoing debates about ethical considerations in psychological research.
The Experiment
Participants, recruited through newspaper ads, were told they were part of a study on learning and memory. They were assigned the role of a ‘teacher’, while a confederate (an actor unknown to the participant) played the ‘learner’.
The teacher was instructed to administer increasingly severe electric shocks to the learner whenever they answered a question incorrectly. The shocks ranged from 15 to 450 volts and were clearly indicated with labels ranging from ‘Slight Shock’ to ‘Danger: Severe Shock’. Unbeknownst to the participant, the shocks were not real, and the learner’s reactions—cries of pain, plead to stop, and eventually silence—were acted out.
An authority figure, dressed as a lab-coated experimenter, urged participants to continue administering shocks, even when the learner appeared to be in severe distress. The experimenter used prods such as: “please continue”, and “you have no other choice; you must go on”.
The experiment results were more shocking than anyone expected: 65% of participants delivered the maximum 450-volt shock, despite expressing discomfort or moral conflict. Only 14 of the 40 participants decided not to continue administering shocks, and all of them stopped only after they had already delivered intense shocks. However, the obedience was accompanied by intense distress. Behaviours observed included extreme tension, nervous laughter, and even uncontrollable seizures. This reveals the severe internal conflict between inner moral values and external authoritarian pressure. According to these results, external pressure seems to have the upper hand in many cases.
Stanley Milgram alongside the “shock generator” he used during his groundbreaking experiments at Yale University in the 1960s. Credit: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Ethical Concerns
At the time, the Milgram experiment was groundbreaking, but it would under no circumstances meet modern ethical standards. The ethical issues include:
- Deception: Participants were misled about the true purpose of the study and the nature of the shocks.
- Informed Consent: Participants were not fully aware of what they were agreeing to, violating the principle of informed consent.
- Emotional Distress: The experiment caused significant psychological distress.
- Right to Withdraw: The authority figure’s insistence to continue made it unclear whether participants could withdraw from the study without repercussions.
These issues led to a revaluation of ethical practices in psychology, contributing to the establishment of ethical guidelines like those outlined by the American Psychological Association (APA) and the British Psychological Society (BPS).
Further criticism
The experiment has been evaluated several times and many important limitations have been pointed out. Most importantly, the initial sample bias. In Milgram’s study, participants were only American males. Later on, researchers aimed to replicate the study with more diverse samples, finding similar results for several different cultures and females. Further criticism includes ecological validity, pointing out that the experiment was conducted in a laboratory, a setting that does not correspond with our everyday natural habitat. When the location was changed to a run-down building, obedience rates dropped to 47.5%. Albeit still high, this illustrates that the wider context does have an important impact. The experiment moreover, couldn’t account for more complex mechanisms found in the real world, such as group dynamics, which often play a key role in conformity and obedience.
The Milgram experiment demonstrated the profound influence of authority figures on human behaviour, highlighting a troubling aspect of social conformity and obedience. It showed that individuals could commit acts against their moral beliefs when instructed by someone they perceive as an authority. The experiment remains a cornerstone of social psychology, offering valuable lessons about human behaviour, authority, and ethics. While its methods were controversial, its findings have shaped our understanding of obedience and the potential for harm inherent in hierarchical systems. Today, it serves as a reminder of the ethical responsibility researchers bear and the complexities of human psychology.
