Milgram Shock Experiment: A Vital Lesson in Social Psychology

Milgram's study took place at Yale University in 1961. It was inspired by the contemporary trial of World War II criminal Adolf Eichmann's excuse that he engaged in the atrocities of the Jewish Holocaust because he was "just following orders."

Milgram devised a series of experiments using paid volunteer subjects to test obedience to authority and determine the limits of how far average humans would go to appease an authority figure.

The volunteers were promised $4.50 for their time and given false background information about the purpose of what they thought was a "learning" experiment.

Milgram's obedience experiments began with a scientific authority figure wearing a lab coat telling the volunteers they would be assigned to a teacher or student role. However, they were always placed in the superior role.

The lab coat-wearing scientist would then instruct the teacher to ask the student a series of questions. For each incorrect answer, the experimenter instructed the teacher to administer increasingly painful electric shocks between 15 and 450 volts.

Obedience levels were recorded as each volunteer agreed or disagreed to continue administering shocks to cause harm to someone they had never met before.

Authority Figure vs. Personal Conscience

People are taught early on to obey authority figures — to listen to parents or not talk back to teachers. However, when does obedient behavior lead to mindless conformance to power structures that do not consider everyone's best interests?

Many of Milgram's participants engaged in destructive obedience when they exhibited an extreme willingness to potentially harm strangers for something as trivial as giving the wrong answer to a question.

The strangest parameter of the laboratory experiments was that the human participants assumed they would be paid regardless of the outcome. So, it's not as if disobedient participants were dissuaded by potential monetary loss when they refused to administer very strong shock levels.

There was no "gun to their head" ultimatum. "Teachers" who chose to administer shocks were merely following orders. These obedient participants illustrated the power of external influence. Participants refused when they listened to their conscience and did what they felt was right.

Experiment Sample

Milgram conducted a wide-net search for viable human subjects around Yale University, New Haven and surrounding communities. Each iteration replicating Milgram and his team's experiment requires a pool of roughly 40 males between the ages of 20 and 50.

Roughly 780 participants assumed the role of teacher, with just 40 female candidates selected.

Test Procedures

Experimental subjects believed the leaders of Milgram's laboratory experiments when they promised that the shock generator would not cause any lasting or life-threatening effects. However, several ethical implications can be drawn from the labels denoting various shock levels, ranging from "slight shock" and "moderate shock" to "severe shock" and even "XXX."

Even though the experiment confederate (the "student" attached to the shock plate) felt no pain and was merely acting as though they were receiving intense shock levels, "teacher" roles in the experiment fully believed that every press of the button would administer electric shocks to the other participant.

Situational Factors

Milgram's obedience experiments illustrated that challenging authority figures, even someone as non-threatening as an assistant professor in a lab coat, takes courage and a strong sense of justice. Aside from any deception involved, many participants obeyed to maximum shock levels.

However, several changes in situational factors, such as moving the test location away from Yale University, having the supervisor not wear a lab coat or placing the student next to the teacher, all decreased obedience levels.

Milgram's findings proved that although obedience fell in some instances, most test subjects were willing to administer intense shock levels to the other participants when prompted by an authority figure.

This conclusion also led to Milgram's Agency Theory, which states that people put in difficult situations will often deflect blame to a higher authority figure.

Although many of the results of Milgram's original study are marred with controversy, Stanley Milgram's experiment also highlighted important legal and philosophic aspects of psychological research regarding informed consent and the withdrawal right.