Obedience to Authority

Reference
Obedience to Authority
- Stanley Milgrim

Summary
In short, this book is about Milgrim famous shock experiments where people were tested to see how much they would shock someone before quitting.  The catch was that the shocks to the victim were never real, and the experiment was testing the subject’s obedience to authority.  Whether or not they finished the entire range of shocks was the actual experiment, and not the actual shocking itself.  By carrying out all the shock, this was considered complete obedience.  If any of the subjects refused to continue at any point, this counted as disobedience.  The initial set of experiments simply had the subject pushing a button to shock the victim, and they were fairly far away from the victim while this was going on.  It was found that roughly 60% or more subjects were fully obedient, depending on the experimental parameters.

But Milgrim didn’t stop here.  He wanted to further investigate the true meanings and motivations behind normal people doing the things that they did.  He switched up many different aspects of the experiments in order to gain further knowledge into how the obedience rate could be affected.  What he found was that the closer the subject was to the victim, the lower the obedience rate.  He also found that a less credible experimenter decreased the rate, as well as any other type of aspect conflicting with absolute authority.  An instance of this was a second experimenter saying the experiment should stop.

Milgrim came to the conclusion that many of the subjects were stuck in a social situation that was difficult to escape.  Society teaches to respect authority, and so the subjects were in conflict between their want to stop the experiment, and simply listening to the authoritative figure and continuing.  It was this conundrum that brought him to the main point of his experiment.  He wanted people to know and be aware of the danger of destruction possible by normal people simply following orders from authoritative figures.  This was his main defense in justifying his experiments to people who criticized him.

Discussion
When this experiment was discussed in Opening Skinner’s Box, I did not fully understand the implications and specifics of it.  I knew roughly what it was about, but having all of these extra details makes the findings far clearer to me now.  Some people feel this experiment was quite inhumane, which I can understand honestly.  But, I think the information it found on how human being work and interact is extremely valuable.  I am not saying we should conduct this experiment on a regular basis, but it is useful to know how easily normal people can be manipulated.  The social implication he found out and discussed alone are enough for me to believe in his work.  Even though any of the subjects could have technically chosen to stop shocking the victim at any time, the results clearly state otherwise.  They did have the capability to stop, but making this choice was clearly very difficult for most of them.  And even the ones who did stop did not do so right away.  Breaking social norms in order to think for ourselves and break out of the shell is not always easy, and I think this is one of the biggest take home messages of Milgrim’s experiments.