Most Submitted to Authority

In 1961, a professor of psychology at the American Yale University called Stanley Milgram placed an announcement in the newspaper looking for volunteers that would, for a substantial reward, take part in a study of memory. From a host of candidates he chose forty and invited them to his laboratory. But it would only be at the end of the experiment that they would find out that the professor was not at all studying their memory abilities, but was interested in something completely different.

Electroshocks for the good of science

At their arrival to the laboratory the volunteers were received by a young scientist in white robes who explained to them how the experiment would be carried out. Pairs of two candidates were chosen an asked to toss a coin in order to determine who would take on the role of the “teacher” and who the role of the “learner”. They were then taken into a special room where the learner would have electrodes attached to his arms through which the teacher could give him educative electric shocks. The teacher and the learner would then experience a mild electric shock on their own skin so that they were well aware of the pain that several tens of volts could already inflict. All the while the conductor of the experiment reassured them that even though the shocks could be painful, they would pose no danger to their health and cause no long-term damage.

The learner then remained attached to the electrodes while the teacher was taken to another room which contained the device for administering electroshocks and a speaker connected to the room in which the learner had been placed. The teacher was now instructed to give the learner questions testing his memory. For each wrong answer he was told to punish the learner with an electric shock as this was supposed to be a part of the study of the influence of punishment on the subject’s ability to memorize. However, not all shocks were of the same intensity. Each following shock was 15 volts stronger. From the hardly perceptible 15 volts in the beginning of the experiment the teacher had at his disposal 30 switches of which the last one could release 450 volts through the learner’s body. Each switch also had a label describing the danger involved, for example, “moderate shock”, or “danger: very intense shock”. The last two switches which could administer the highest voltage were simply described as “XXX”.

At first, the experiment proceeded smoothly as the learner answered each question posed by the teacher correctly. As the tasks became more and more difficult, the learner would gradually start to make mistakes. The teacher began to administer, at the beginning still mild, shocks for each mistake committed. But when the shocks reached 150 volts the learner suddenly did not want to participate anymore. He would start to moan, saying that it hurt too much and that he wanted to quit. At 180 volts he would start screaming that he could no longer take the pain. At higher voltages he would whimper and groan, and above 330 volts he would no longer respond. The teacher would then be instructed that in the case the learner does not respond in a few seconds he should interpret his silence as a wrong answer and proceed.


What is this study really about?

The actual subject of Milgram’s study was the very question of how the teacher would respond to the learner’s suffering. The research on the influence of punishment on the ability to memorize was only a pretext to get the unsuspecting volunteers into his laboratory. He was not examining their memory abilities, however, but their obedience to the authority that, in this case, was represented by the young doctor in white overalls, the conductor of the experiment, who encouraged them to continue.

During the entire experiment the scientist was in the same room as the teacher. He would sit as his desk arranging some paperwork, all the while keeping an eye on the experiment. When problems arose, the teacher usually turned to the scientist and asked if it would not be better to conclude the experiment because the learner was in pain and no longer wanted to collaborate. To this request the conductor of the experiment who represented the authority would first reply: “Please continue.” When the teacher would repeat his request to stop the experiment he would answer: “The experiment requires that you continue.” At the third appeal he would say: “It is absolutely essential that you continue.” To the final plea he would respond: “You have no other choice, you must go on.” It was only after all four encouragements had been given to the teacher and he still demanded that the testing be stopped, that the experiment was finally put to an end.

At this point it was explained to the teacher that the learner did not really receive shocks, but was actually an actor, and that the reactions that came through the speaker were pre-recorded. The coin toss determining who would be the teacher and who the learner, was performed with a same-sided coin, so that the actor would always become the learner, and the volunteer the teacher. It should also be mentioned that during the initial electric shock test the actor always complained that he had heart problems, so that the volunteer who was given the role of the teacher would be well aware of his false condition.

The shocking results of the experiment

Before the experiment was carried out, Milgram asked his colleagues how they thought the volunteers would react, and they predicted that only the handful of people who had sadistic inclinations would be capable of continuing to administer electroshocks beyond the limit when the learner starts to scream that he can no longer take the pain. But the actual results of the experiment shocked everyone. 26 % of altogether 40 volunteers were capable of submitting themselves completely to the authority of the experiment conductor in his white overalls and of inflicting the most severe, 450 volt electroshocks. Only a third of them stopped the experiment somewhere in the middle, no longer willing to cause pain despite the authority’s encouragement.

The experiment was later repeated more than a hundred times in different environments in different parts of the world, but the results were always very similar. About 60 percent of people were ready to completely submit to the will of the authority and administer the most intense and deadly electroshocks. A short while ago, several researchers repeated the Milgram experiment in various documentary programmes on torture and discovered that the percentage of people who are willing to take it to the end has not changed at all in the past decades.

Milgram also reported that, during the experiment, the participants were under a great amount of stress which showed in excessive perspiration and the shaking of the hands, while some of them even had trouble speaking. He also noticed that some of them tried to overcome the emotional tensions building up inside them with nervous laughter. This is how he described the reaction of one of the volunteers: “A mature and by all appearances cool-blooded businessman stepped into the laboratory confident and smiling. In 20 minutes he transformed into a shivering, stumbling wreck of a man, rapidly approaching the point of a nervous breakdown … but he continued to respond to every word of the experiment conductor and obeyed to the very end.”

Of course, Milgram was criticized of having caused permanent damage to the unsuspecting volunteers by confronting them with such intense emotional struggle. To find out whether the experiment participants had actually suffered from any long-term consequences he called the volunteers a couple of months later and asked them if they had been experiencing any trauma because of what took place during the experiment. According to his reports, the simulated infliction of pain had left no permanent consequences. The majority of the volunteers did not even regret having participated in the experiment.

What makes good people do evil things?

The Milgram experiment first took place in the beginning of the sixties at about the same time as the trial of Adolf Eichmann who was responsible for the killings of Jews during the Second World War, but in a Jerusalem court pleaded that he was only obeying orders. Milgram wondered if he could make an average American inflict severe pain on completely innocent people by putting him in a situation where an authority would give him the clear order to execute an atrocious deed in the name of a higher goal.

He later carried out different variations of the experiment to find out which parameters were most decisive in establishing obedience. In one of the variations, the conductor of the experiment would get a telephone call soon after the beginning of the experiment, so he asked another volunteer who was actually an actor to take his place while he leaves the room. Even though his substitute insisted that the teacher continue with the experiment, only 20 % of the teachers proceeded to the most intense electroshocks. Similarly, the willingness to continue decreased in circumstances where, in the eyes of the teacher, the authority of the conductor of the experiment was diminished.

On the other hand, the submission to authority increased when the teachers were not turning the electroshock switches themselves, but were part of a team that questioned the learner. In these circumstances only one tenth of the volunteers decided to quit before the end. However, the personality and the appearance of the conductor of the experiment did not affect the results. Whether the experiment was conducted by an unkempt old man or a well-groomed young man did not make any difference; the teachers responded to authority in a very similar way.