The Shocking Truth Of The Notorious Milgram Obedience Experiment

The article that will be discussed in this paper is titled “The Shocking Truth of the Notorious Milgram Obedience Experiments”, published on Discover Magazine’s website.

The article discusses the (in)famous Milgram Experiments, an experiment conducted in 1961 by Stanley Milgram, in which the goal was to examine the effect of authority on the obedience of subjects. The experiment involved subjects administering shocks to what they believed was another participant in the study, who had the task of answering a quiz. If a wrong answer was given, the subject was to administer a shock to the person (in reality, an actor) taking the quiz. For each wrong answer, the voltage of the shock would be increased. In his original paper, Milgram had reported that up to 65% of subjects maxed out the supposed shock machine at 450 volts, even while the actor’s responses became more intense with each increase in voltage, and the actor was at times refusing to continue or acting like he was unable to answer (Burger, n.d.). The article, however, argues that the results might not be as uncomplicated as they seem.

First, the results of 65% were obtained in only one (the first) of 24 different experiments. Analyzing the other experiments, the results were less extreme. Furthermore, only 40 people participated in the experiment, which is a relatively small sample size. Thirdly, the script the experimenter was giving, which included what to say when subjects refused to shock the quiz-taker, was not followed. The experimenter repeatedly went to ‘check’ on the quiz-taker, reassuring the subject that he was fine, while this was not part of the script. Finally, some subjects claimed to know that the shocks were fake, and some even claimed to have tested this by purposefully administering a smaller shock to monitor the actor’s response. These claims were not taken into account in the final paper. These four issues threaten to undermine the results as they have been published (Perry, 2013). New studies, however, at least partly corroborated the results originally found by Milgram (Burger, n.d.).

There are some other interesting takeaways from the Milgram experiment, as well. In the different experiments he performed, he also investigated which factors affect obedience. Milgram found that proximity to the actor negatively influenced the subject’s willingness to continue administering shocks. Seeing other subjects refuse also increased the likelihood of refusal, and when the instructions to continue came from a person other than the experimenter (another subject, for example), refusal rates were also significantly higher, suggesting that people tend to be obedient when given orders by people with authority (Burger, n.d.).

Burger (n.d.) discusses the Milgram experiment at length in their chapter about obedience. The article discussed in this paper criticizes the Milgram experiment for several reasons listed above, as the study might not have been scientifically sound. The article mentions that Milgram himself even knew of the limitations of his research and that the experiment was more a work of art. The article concludes by stating that Milgram’s research is useful, however; it teaches us to be more critical of scientific research, and not to blindly believe facts because they were presented by a person with authority.

The Milgram experiment produced some interesting results, as it shows how one can be persuaded to do things they normally wouldn’t do by persons with authority. This knowledge can be useful in real life, for example in the area of politics in business. Knowing what influence authority can have on personal decision-making can help people judge superiors’ commands critically, and possibly prevent unwanted actions to be undertaken. Furthermore, Milgram’s notes on the proximity of the subject to the actor have some interesting takeaways. For example, a lot of jobs no longer require face-to-face communication, but instead rely on computer systems or interfaces, which increases the distance between two persons, and might lead to an increase in unethical decisions or actions on both parties. Especially in the military, where warfare is increasingly digitalized, this can have far-reaching consequences.