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The Milgram Experiment

By Saul McLeod
2008

In 1963, Stanley Milgram conducted a study on obedience. Using a series of social psychology experiments,
Milgram measured participants’ willingness to comply with an authority figure. As you read the text, identify
the factors that influenced the behavior of the participants in the study.

[1] One of the most famous studies of obedience in

psychology was carried out by Stanley Milgram in
1963.

Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University,

conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict
between obedience to authority and personal
conscience.

He examined justifications for acts of genocide

offered by those accused at the World War II
Nuremberg War Criminal trials. Their defense
was often based on “obedience” — that they were
just following orders from their superiors.

The experiments began in July 1961, a year after

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the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram
devised the experiment to answer the question
“Could it be that Eichmann and his million
accomplices in the Holocaust were just following
orders? Could we call them all accomplices?”

[5] Milgram wanted to investigate whether Germans

"German Third Reich Officers 1022" by thardy1 is in the public
were particularly obedient to authority figures, as domain.
this was a common explanation for the Nazi
killings in World War II.

Aim
Milgram was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved
harming another person. He wanted to know how easily ordinary people could be influenced into
committing atrocities, for example, Germans in WWII.

1. Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962) was a German Nazi lieutenant colonel and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust.

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 Procedure
Milgram selected participants for his experiment by newspaper advertising for male participants to
take part in a study at Yale University. Volunteers were told they would participate in a lab experiment
investigating “learning.” Participants were 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, whose jobs ranged from
unskilled to professional, from the New Haven area. They were paid $4.50 for just showing up.

At the beginning of the experiment they were introduced to another participant, who was actually a
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confederate of Milgram. They drew straws to determine their roles — “learner” or “teacher” —
although this was fixed, and the confederate was always the learner (pretending to be a real
participant). There was another confederate dressed in a grey lab coat and playing the role of
“experimenter” (not Milgram).

Two rooms in the Yale Interaction Laboratory were used — one for the learner (with an electric chair)
and another for the teacher and experimenter (with an electric shock generator). The learner was
taken into the first room and had electrodes attached to his arms, and the teacher and researcher
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went into a room next door that contained the electric shock generator.

[10] After Mr. Wallace, the learner, had studied a list of word pairs given him to learn, the teacher would
then test him by naming a word and asking the learner to recall its partner/pair from a list of four
possible choices.

The teacher was then told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake,
increasing the level of shock each time. There were 30 switches on the shock generator marked from
15 volts (Slight Shock) to 375 volts (Danger: Severe Shock) to 450 volts (XXX).

The learner gave mainly wrong answers (on purpose), and for each of these the teacher gave him an
electric shock. When the teacher refused to administer a shock the experimenter was to give a series
of orders (called “prods”) to ensure they continued. There were 4 prods and if one was not obeyed
then the experimenter read out the next prod, and so on:

Prod 1: Please continue.

Prod 2: The experiment requires you to continue.
Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue.
Prod 4: You have no other choice but to continue.

Results
65% (two-thirds) of participants (i.e. “teachers”) continued to the highest level of 450 volts. All of the
participants continued to 300 volts.

Milgram did more than one experiment — he carried out 18 variations of his study, all with similar
findings. All he did was alter the situation to see how this affected obedience.

2. an accomplice
3. The electric shock generator did not actually work; it was only there to make the “teacher” believe that the
experiment was real.

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 Conclusion
[15] The study suggested that ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even
to the extent of killing an innocent human being. Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the
way we are brought up.

People tend to obey orders from other people if they recognize their authority as morally right and/or
legally based. This response to legitimate authority is learned in a variety of situations, for example in
the family, school and workplace.

Milgram sums this up in the article “The Perils of Obedience” (Milgram 1974), writing:

“The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say
very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple
experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on
another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark
authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives
against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the
screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of
adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief
finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.”

Milgram’s Agency Theory

Milgram explained the behavior of his participants by suggesting that people actually have two states
of behavior when they are in a social situation:

• The autonomous state — people direct their own actions, and they take responsibility for
the results of those actions.
• The agentic state — people allow others to direct their actions, and then pass off the
responsibility for the consequences to the person giving the orders. In other words, they act
as agents for another person’s will.

Milgram suggested that two things must be in place in order for a person to enter the agentic state:

1. The person giving the orders is perceived as being qualified to direct other people’s behavior.
That is, they are seen as legitimate.
2. The person being ordered about is able to believe that the authority will accept responsibility
for what happens.

[20] Agency theory says that people will obey an authority when they believe that the authority will take
responsibility for the consequences of their actions. This is supported by some aspects of Milgram’s
evidence. For example, when participants were reminded that they had responsibility for their own
actions, almost none of them were prepared to obey. In contrast, many participants who were refusing
to go on did so if the experimenter said that he would take responsibility.

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“The Milgram Experiment” by Saul McLeod. Copyright © 2008 by Saul McLeod. Reprinted with permission, all rights reserved.

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 Text-Dependent Questions
Directions: For the following questions, choose the best answer or respond in complete sentences.

1. PART A: Which of the following best describes the central idea of the text?
A. The Milgram experiment proved that people have very weak willpower and are
easily prone to violence.
B. The Milgram experiment proved that people will likely follow orders, even
harmful ones, when instructed by an accepted authority figure.
C. The Milgram experiment proved that people are more likely to harm others
when placed in a position of power over another human being.
D. The Milgram experiment proved that people cannot be held accountable for
their actions when another person forces them to do something.

2. PART B: Which of the following quotes best supports the answer to Part A?
A. “The teacher was then told to administer an electric shock every time the learner
makes a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time.” (Paragraph 11)
B. “65% (two-thirds) of participants (i.e. “teachers”) continued to the highest level of
450 volts. All of the participants continued to 300 volts.” (Paragraph 13)
C. “ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to
the extent of killing an innocent human being.” (Paragraph 15)
D. “when participants were reminded that they had responsibility for their own
actions, almost none of them were prepared to obey.” (Paragraph 20)

3. Consider the prods quoted in paragraph 12. Which statement best describes the impact
that the word choice used for the prods has on the meaning of the text?
A. The prods became increasingly more strict and severe, highlighting the
increased pressure the participants faced to inflict harsher punishments.
B. The prods became increasingly vaguer, which shows how the participants’
became more focused on their orders than the point of the experiment.
C. The prods became more authoritative as the participants gained more control,
which disproved the Nazi soldiers’ defense that they were powerless and had to
follow orders.
D. The prods became less polite and more annoyed, emphasizing the
experimenters’ unethical treatment of the participants.

4. What connection does the author draw between the study’s results and obedience in
paragraphs 15-17?
A. People only obey orders when they agree with the ordering authority’s morals,
indicating that the participants agreed with the experimenters’ harsh methods.
B. The participants’ personal consciences did not affect their actions, and so the
results show that obedience totally eliminates personal guilt.
C. The results are founded in recognizing and obeying authority, a behavior that is
frequently learned while growing up.
D. The results are founded in obeying authority without question, a behavior that is
emphasized more as one becomes an adult.

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5. How does the section entitled “Milgram’s Agency Theory” (Paragraphs 18-20) contribute to
the author’s explanation of obedience?

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 Discussion Questions
Directions: Brainstorm your answers to the following questions in the space provided. Be prepared to
share your original ideas in a class discussion.

1. How far were most people willing to go to obey authority? Would you have gone this far?

2. According to the text, “ordinary” people are more likely than not to follow an authority
figure. Does this seem believable? Why or why not?

3. Do you think that what the participants did was wrong? Does it mean that they are “evil”?

4. Milgram’s findings can be used to possibly explain why people have committed horrible
acts throughout history, despite being considered “good people” under other
circumstances. With the findings of these study, how might such things be prevented from
happening again?

5. In the context of this article, why do people do bad things? Use evidence from this text, your
own experience, and other art, literature, or history in your answer.