Article
Would You Deliver an Electric Shock
in 2015? Obedience in the Experimental
Paradigm Developed by Stanley Milgram in
the 50 Years Following the Original Studies
Social Psychological and
Personality Science
2017, Vol. 8(8) 927-933
ª The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1948550617693060
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Dariusz Doliński1, Tomasz Grzyb1, Michał Folwarczny1, Patrycja Grzybała1,
Karolina Krzyszycha1, Karolina Martynowska1, and Jakub Trojanowski1
Abstract
In spite of the over 50 years which have passed since the original experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram on obedience, these
experiments are still considered a turning point in our thinking about the role of the situation in human behavior. While ethical
considerations prevent a full replication of the experiments from being prepared, a certain picture of the level of obedience of
participants can be drawn using the procedure proposed by Burger. In our experiment, we have expanded it by controlling for the
sex of participants and of the learner. The results achieved show a level of participants’ obedience toward instructions similarly
high to that of the original Milgram studies. Results regarding the influence of the sex of participants and of the “learner,” as well as
of personality characteristics, do not allow us to unequivocally accept or reject the hypotheses offered.
Keywords
conformity, obedience, social influence
Experiments conducted by Milgram (1963, 1965), in which the
study participant is encouraged by the experimenter to administer an electric shock to another person, are generally considered to be one of the most important (if not the most important)
in the field of social psychology (e.g., Benjamin & Simpson,
2009; Blass, 2004). The entire series of experiments carried out
by Milgram (1974) demonstrated that under conditions of pressure from an authority, the majority of people will carry out his
commands even when they are informed at the beginning that
they have the right to end their participation in the experiment
at any time, while the information placed on the device used in
emitting electric shocks states unequivocally that it can damage
the health of the “learner,” or even kill him.
Following the publishing of Milgram’s work (1963, 1965),
there were discussions in the psychological literature concerning the ethical aspect of such experiments (e.g., Fischer, 1968;
Kaufmann, 1967). While a few replication experiments were
carried out in the 1970s in various countries (e.g., Kilham &
Mann, 1974; Shanab & Yahya, 1978), further work within this
paradigm was then halted.
Naturally, an attempt was made at finding various alternatives to direct replications of the original Milgram studies. For
example, Slater et al. (2006) conducted an experiment in which
the “electric shock” was administered not to a living human but
rather a computer-generated avatar. Participants in this experiment were seated in front of a screen displaying a picture of a
woman (“the learner”) reacting in real time to electric shocks.
Another idea for creating an ethically acceptable procedure to
examine obedience was to assign unpleasant descriptors to relatively pleasant images (Haslam, Reicher, & Birney, 2014).
The researchers prepared a series of 30 pictures sorted on the
basis of their attractiveness (beginning from the least pleasant
to the most pleasant). The participants’ task consisted in
selecting from among four negative adjectives the one which
best described a given image. It should be noted that while the
pictures became increasingly attractive as the study continued, the adjectives remained negative, which led to increasing
discomfort on the part of the participants. In the opinion of the
experiment’s designers, this procedure was to evoke a discomfort similar to that experienced by participants in the original Milgram studies. It should be noted that we may have
serious doubts regarding the extent to which this procedure
really reflects the realism of the Milgram experiments and
whether the impact of authority on obedience is what has
1
Faculty of Psychology in Wrocław, SWPS University of Social Sciences and
Humanities, Wrocław, Poland
Corresponding Author:
Tomasz Grzyb, Faculty of Psychology in Wrocław, SWPS University of Social
Sciences and Humanities, Ostrowskiego 30b, 53-238 Wrocław, Poland.
Email: tgrzyb@swps.edu.pl
928
essentially been tested here. One thing is certain: Since the
original experiments by Stanley Milgram, we have yet to find
a successful way of reconciling realism with care for the
well-being of study participants.
A few years ago, however, Burger (2009) noted that in the
original studies by Milgram, a decisive majority of people who
pressed the 10th button (33 people of 40) could then be convinced to press all of the remaining ones (26 people of 33).
He thus arrived at the conclusion that conducting an experiment in which participants would be encouraged only to press
10 successive (and not 30 successive) buttons would, on the
one hand, significantly reduce their level of discomfort, while
on the other it would allow for a direct comparison of obedience in pressing the 10th button and, indirectly, that is through
performing an appropriate estimate and comparison of total
obedience. Burger asked himself the question of what level
of obedience would be recorded in the United States almost a
half-century after the Milgram experiments. He thus replicated
Experiment No. 5 in which the alleged learner reports heart
problems at the beginning of the experiment, and before the
10th shock is administered he demands the halting of the
experiment, again reminding those present of his health problems. It turned out that 70% of Americans could be induced
to press the 10th button, which led Burger (2009) to the conclusion that “average Americans react to this laboratory situation
today much the way they did 45 years ago” (p. 9).
In our study, we decided to apply the empirical scheme of
Milgram (1974), Experiment 2 with Burger’s (2009) idea of
using only 10 buttons. It is worth emphasizing that Milgram
noted almost identical reactions by the participants in Experiments No. 2 and No. 5 (the 10th button was pressed by 34 of
40 in Experiment 2, and 33 of 40 in Experiment 5, and while
button 30 was pressed by 25 participants in Experiment 2, and
26 in Experiment 5). Experiment 5 has been more frequently
replicated around the world than Experiment 2, but for the sole
reason that it is more spectacular and its results are more shocking. From the perspective of estimating obedience levels, both
paradigms are, however, equally valid, while ethical considerations argue for the choice of Experiment 2 in which people are
not encouraged to administer an electric shock to an individual
suffering from heart problems and who demands that his participation in the experiment be concluded.
Our objective was to examine how high a level of obedience
we would encounter among residents of Poland. It should be
emphasized that tests in the Milgram paradigm have never been
conducted in Central Europe. The unique history of the countries in the region made the issue of obedience toward authority
seems exceptionally interesting to us. After World War II,
which began with Germany’s attack on Poland in 1939 and
concluded in 1945, the countries located in Eastern Europe
were made dependent on the Soviet Union, while the communist system was forced on them. One of the foundations of that
system was significant curbs on democracy and the demand of
strict obedience to authority. The official press used censorship
to develop an impression of the authorities’ infallibility and
moral legitimacy to ruling through the use of orders and
Social Psychological and Personality Science 8(8)
decrees. The primary and secondary school curricula also marginalized the role of such ideas as individual freedom and the
right to decide about one’s own affairs (Hodos, 1999; Naimark
& Gibianskii, 1997). However, the year 1989 marked a sea
change for the entire region. The understanding reached by the
communist authorities and anticommunist opposition initiated
a rapid series of changes across all of Eastern Europe. Free
press, democratic elections, and free speech became the norm
(Petersen, 2001; Rothschild and Wingfield, 2007). However,
in recent years we have observed a surge in the popularity of
the political party named “Law and Justice” [Pol.: “Prawo i
Sprawiedliwość”], which won an absolute majority in the last
parliamentary elections. In both the verbal arena and in its
actions, this party values governing with a strong hand rather
than freedom and democracy. Its efforts to limit the role of
democratic institutions and eliminate pluralism in the media
have met with extensive social approval (public opinion polls
show this party with support remaining stable at over 30%).
This all means that both the historical experiences of Poles
and the current political situation may have a complicated
and opaque impact on obedience levels. By the same toke,
we felt it would be interesting to replicate the Milgram
experiment in this country.
Besides, we also took advantage of introducing a factor into
the experimental design that had previously never been tested
to a satisfactory extent.
Discussion of Milgram’s experiments in the psychological
literature generally oscillates around consternation at the universal nature of people’s pliability. For example, emphasis is
placed on the fact that the sex of participants in experiments
on obedience is not a factor that differentiates their reactions
(see Blass, 1991, for review). When considering the role of sex
in experiments carried out in the Milgram paradigm, we turned
our attention to something entirely different. However, before
we say what that was, let us take a look at three typical descriptions of Milgram’s experiment that can be found in the psychological literature.
1.
2.
3.
“Participants sat in front of an imposing shock generator and were instructed to administer an electric shocks
to the learner for each incorrect answer” (Burger, 2009,
p. 1).
“Who among us was not surprised and sobered to learn
that 65% of his subjects delivered the full series of
painful and escalating shocks to an innocent partner?”
(Gilbert, 1981, p. 690).
“First, of course, is the unexpected enormity of the basic
findings themselves—that 65% of a sample of average
American adult men were willing to punish another person with increasingly higher voltages of electric shock”
(Blass, 1991, p. 398).
We have no doubt that the intention of these and other
authors writing about experiments on obedience toward authority is not to present a false picture of reality, but it is worth
noting that the confederate is defined here using words which
Doliński et al.
are devoid of biological sex (learner, “partner,” and “person”);
meanwhile, in nearly all studies on obedience carried out under
the Milgram paradigm the learner who was allegedly being
electrified was a man.
Existing empirical data thus demonstrates that study participants are inclined to administer a shock to a man sitting behind
a wall. However, it is not clear whether the behavior of participants would change in conditions in which the experimenter
instructed them to give the shock to a woman. Why do we think
that the sex of the learner in experiments performed in the Milgram paradigm may be significant?
Because women are physically weaker and more susceptible
to physical violence than men, in accordance with cultural
norms they should be treated more favorably and gently than
men (Anderson, 2000; Muller-Funk, 2012). This assumption
is supported in the results of meta-analyses of experiments
regarding altruism, which show that women receive assistance
from others more often than men (Eagly & Crowley, 1986;
Piliavin & Unger, 1985), as well as meta-analyses of experiments concerning aggression, which show that it is more prevalent in conditions where its target is a man than when
aggression should be directed at a woman (Eagly & Steffen,
1986). It could be assumed that results will be similar in the
case of experiments carried out in the Milgram paradigm.
Administering an electric shock is an obvious violation of the
norm to refrain from harming an innocent person. Shocking a
woman with electricity, however, is also an infringement of the
norm to treat people with greater leniency who belong to vulnerable groups. It is therefore a more urgent violation of cultural norms than shocking a man with electricity. We also
think that the sex of the learner will be of particular significance when the participants are males. Traditional European
and North American norms (collectively “Western”) assume
that men are obliged to behave nobly toward women, and thus
to avoid causing them harm, both in word and in deed (Genovese, 2000; Girouard, 1981).
On the other hand, in some milieus there are cultural
norms which hold that men should treat women as their
inferiors and require obedience and pliancy (Crowell &
Burges, 1996; Fontes & McCloskey, 2011). This, in turn,
would mean that male participants in an experiment conducted within the Milgram paradigm would not have any
problem with administering an electric shock to a woman
who made a mistake in answering.
The issue of the learner’s sex as a determinant of obedience
is complex and warrants empirical study. Meanwhile, we are
aware of only three experiments in which the learner was a
woman. In the first one (Constanzo, 1976), sex of the learner
was manipulated. No evidence was obtained for the influence
of this factor on the level of obedience. However, this study
was never published, the experiment was conducted four
decades ago, the procedure employed was significantly modified from the original one as applied by Milgram, and the
cohort of participants consisted exclusively of university students, which may also have known one another. In the study
by Shanab and Yahya (1977), the participant and the learner
929
were always of the same sex, which did not allow for a determination of whether the sex of the person to be zapped with
electricity influences the obedience of participants. In the study
by Slater et al. (2006), participants were asked to put on 3-D
stereo glasses and then instructed to administer a shock to a virtual woman appearing on the screen. The absence in the study
design of conditions in which the learner was a virtual man also
prevented evaluation of the role played by the sex of the person
inflicting pain (albeit virtual) in the degree of obedience.
The issue of the role that the student’s sex may play remains
therefore an open question, requiring empirical exploration. In
our experiment, we decided to include 80 participants (40 of
each sex). For an experiment performed within the Milgram
paradigm, this is an exceptionally large number. However,
we are aware that it may also be too small for a definitive
understanding of the role played in obedience toward authority
by sex of the participant and the sex of the learner.
Procedure
Participants were offered Polish złoty (PLN) 50 (equivalent to
around US$15) for about an hour’s time participating in psychological research “dedicated to memory and learning.” They
were recruited in one of two ways. Some of them were
approached on the street, near the university. Others were
acquired with the help of students of the university, who
recruited participants from among their acquaintances who
were not students of that institution. Those eliminated from
the selection procedure were individuals who had taken a psychology course as students, as well as those who responded to
a question about familiarity with psychological experiments
in a manner indicating they may have come across a description of the Milgram studies. People who had ever sought the
assistance of a psychiatrist or psychologist, who had experienced some trauma, and those who had episodes of alcohol
or drug abuse in their history were all eliminated. The age
of participants ranged from 18 to 69 with M ¼ 27.36 (standard
deviation ¼ 11.07).
After arriving to the psychological laboratory of the university, participants and the confederate (the latter pretending to
be a participant) completed two or three questionnaires.1 Subsequently, the experimenter explained that the study would
address the impact of punishments on learning and memory
processes and required a division into the roles of learner and
teacher. He gave the participants PLN 50 for their participation
in the experiment, and then requested that they draw lots for
their role by selecting one of two pieces of paper. Each of them
contained the word “teacher,” but the confederate (a man or a
woman depending on the experimental conditions) announced
that he or she had selected the paper with the word learner. The
experimenter asked the participants to sign an informed consent form for participation in the experiment. The form stated
that the participant could interrupt participation in the study
at any moment. The experimenter additionally emphasized that
any decision to do so would not require the return of the compensation paid for participation. The trio then proceeded to the
930
laboratory, where the experimenter showed the generator
(identical in appearance to the one used by Milgram) and
explained that the learner’s role would consist in learning by
heart associations between certain syllables, and then handed
the learner a piece of paper containing eight pairs of syllables
while leading him or her into a neighboring room (because
we did not have access to the original list of words used by Milgram, we decided that the best approach would be to use syllables, as they are neutral in content). He then returned, handed
the teacher a list of 45 pairs of syllables written in a different
order than those on the paper received by the learner, and then
explained that the teacher’s task was to read one syllable and
wait for the learner’s response. If the response was correct, the
next syllable was to be read. If incorrect, the teacher was to
wait for the experimenter’s instructions. The experimenter also
demonstrated the device’s functioning, showing the teacher
that pressing particular levers would activate a shock of electricity measuring from 15 V to 450 V (a picture of the replica
of Milgram’s device as used in the experiment is located in the
Online Appendix). To demonstrate the functioning of the
device, the experimenter administered a shock of 45 V. Next,
the experimenter attached electrodes to the learner’s wrist in
the presence of the participant. The experimenter asked the
study participant to sit at the generator, and then himself sat
approximately 3 m from the participant. He then instructed the
participant to read the first syllable. The learner responded correctly, and the participant then read the following syllable. The
learner did not make a mistake in this and in the following
attempts, until the seventh syllable, when he erred. The experimenter instructed the teacher to press the first lever. Next, the
learner gave a few proper responses but then made a mistake
with the 10th syllable. The experimenter instructed the teacher
to press Lever No. 2. The next mistake occurred with Syllable
No. 13 and led to the instruction to press the third lever. Successive impulses of electricity (following successive mistakes
that occurred at numbers 15, 18, 22, 24, 27, 31, and 34) resulted
in screams of increasing pain from the learner. These screams
were recorded and played back at appropriate moments. If the
teacher vacillated, the experimenter exhorted him or her using
similar prompts to those applied by Milgram (1974): “Please
continue,” “The experiment requires that you continue,” “It is
absolutely essential that you continue,” and “You have no other
choice, you must go on.” A note was made of the moment when
the participant refused further participation in the experiment, as
well as whether any doubts were expressed that required the
experimenter to deploy one of the aforementioned messages.
Just after the participant pressed the 10th button (or refused
to continue the experiment), the experimenter asked the question “Do you think it hurts?” This was a way of making sure
that the participants were aware of the real pain being administered to the person in the neighboring room. All the participants, save for one man who expressed doubt as to whether
the person sitting behind the wall was being shocked by electricity, responded in the affirmative way. The individual who
spoke of doubts was removed from the pool of results and
replaced by another man.
Social Psychological and Personality Science 8(8)
Figure 1. Number of participants who finished withdrawal from
experiment on particular levers.
The experiment was conducted by one of two experimenters
(either a male in his mid-30s or one in his mid-50s). The role of
the learner was assigned to one of two women in their mid-20s
or one of two men in their mid-20s.
The experiment was conducted after receiving approval
from the departmental ethics commission (Decision No.
2014/E/02/2), which, following a thorough analysis and consideration of the benefits that could result from the study, gave
its approval and oversaw how it was conducted. An important
element in the procedure was the detailed and painstaking
debriefing held individually with each participant following the
conclusion of the experiment. During this debriefing, participants were told of the details of the procedure, apologized for
being deceived at the start of the experiment as to its objectives
and course, and they received an explanation of why it was
done in that way. Each conversation was conducted by a qualified clinical psychologist and lasted from several to several
dozen minutes. Participants were also informed that if they had
any further questions or concerns about the course of the study,
particularly if they felt any discomfort about their own participation, that they should get in contact using a special telephone
number provided to them.
Results
Because initial analyses demonstrated that neither the manner
in which participants were recruited nor the person of the
experimenter, the female learner, or the male learner had any
impact on the structure of results, these factors were not taken
into account in further analysis. Dominant majority of the participants pressed the 10th (the last in this variant of Milgram
experiment) lever. Exact number of participants who finished
on particular levers is shown in Figure 1.
The overall sample size is 80, and the observed proportion
of participants who pressed the 10th button is 90% (this is also
Doliński et al.
931
Table 1. Information About Participants Expressing Doubts in the
Course of the Study.
Figure 2. Sex of the “learner” and obedience.
the effect size). The 95% confidence interval (CI) is from
83.43% to 96.57%.
We also examined the impact of the learner’s sex on obedience. Results are displayed in Figure 2. It is worth remarking
that although the number of people refusing to carry out the
commands of the experimenter was 3 times greater when the
student was a woman, the small sample size does not allow
us to draw excessively far-reaching conclusions. (This result
was not statistically significant, Wald w2 ¼ .341, df ¼ 1, p ¼
.559, Cohen’s d ¼ .13.)
Because of the very low percentage of people resigning
from further participation in the study, we decided to also analyze the doubts raised by participants during the course of the
experiment. In Table 1, we have correlated information about
sex, age, and the moment of withdrawal (or expression of
doubt) of each person who did not demonstrate total obedience
toward the experimenter’s instructions.
Discussion
It is exceptionally interesting that in spite of the many years
which have passed since the original Milgram experiments, the
proportion of people submitting themselves to the authority of
the experimenter remains very high. The result of 90% obedience which we have achieved, 95% CI [83.43%, 96.57%], is
very close to the number of people pressing the 10th button
in the original Milgram studies. For example, in Milgram’s
(1974) Experiment No. 2, replicated in our study, 34 of 40 people pressed Button No. 10 (85% of participants, the 95% CI
extends from 70.54% to 93.32%).
In the Milgram procedure, participant is issued with unambiguous orders from a person who is an authority, who leaves
no room for freedom of decision, does not suggest taking time
Sex
Age
Number of Prompts
Switch Number
Decision
Male
Female
Female
Male
Female
Female
Female
Female
Male
Male
Male
Male
Male
Female
Female
Female
Female
Female
Female
Female
Female
35
58
21
26
24
26
44
25
19
35
26
23
20
25
26
33
23
24
21
20
23
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
1
1
1
2
2
1
3
1
1
1
2
1
2
5
5
6
7
7
8
9
9
8
6
9
5, 9
6
9
5
8
6
9
9
6
8
Stop
Stop
Stop
Stop
Stop
Stop
Stop
Stop
Continue
Continue
Continue
Continue
Continue
Continue
Continue
Continue
Continue
Continue
Continue
Continue
Continue
to think about reactions, or to select from among the options
available. In our experiment, participants demonstrated such
total obedience that we achieved a ceiling effect, making it
exceptionally difficult to demonstrate the influence of any
moderators of the dependent variable. From a certain perspective, it is worth drawing attention to the interesting proportion
of refusals to continue the experiment in the case of differences
in the learner’s sex. When it was a woman being “zapped,” participants were 3 times more likely to withdraw from the experiment (regardless of their own sex). However, the fact that only
10% of our participants failed to perform all of the experimenter’s commands means that this difference is far from statistically significant.
Our results can thus not serve as grounds for definitive conclusions on the role of learner sex in the experiment—with all
certainty the results allow for the declaration neither that such
an impact is present nor that it is not present. However, in our
view the results are worth noting and may provide inspiration
for further studies in the paradigm.
That said, we are forced to admit that we did not confirm the
hypothesis that the sex of the person being shocked with electricity would influence the level of obedience displayed by participants. Our search for factors differentiating the behaviors of
participants in the Milgram paradigm is consistent with the
long tradition of such studies (some of which have been
described in earlier fragments of this article). Searches have
also been conducted for the sources of obedience (apart from
“agentic state”) in the experimental situation itself (e.g., Collins & Brief, 1995; Gilbert, 1981; Lutsky, 1995). However, it
should be remarked that the search for such mediating variables
generally concludes with the admission that the original
explanations proposed by Milgram are difficult to refute,
932
and—significantly—relatively stable over time. An exception
to this rule can be found in the studies of Reicher, Haslam, and
Miller (2014), indicating that participants in studies on
obedience can be motivated rather by appeals to science than
by orders. This is, however, only a more precise labeling of
the reason why participants carry out the commands of the
experimenter–scientist. In other words, we may expect that
contemporary replication experiments on obedience will also
refer in their explanations to agentic state as the primary
mechanism for explaining the behavior of study participants.
It would seem that the results of our experiment also provide
indirect support for this explanation.
In summary, it can be said that such a high level of
obedience among participants, very similar to that attained in
the 1960s in the original Milgram studies, is exceptionally
fascinating. Elms (1995) wrote that Milgram told his students
to ask important research questions and to gather data which
would be interesting even after 100 years had passed. Over
50 years have passed since the original Milgram experiments,
and it seems today we are headed in the right direction to continue in the next half-century seeking the sources of obedience
and compliance among study participants.
Acknowledgments
This research is supported by the BST research Grant No. 25/16/2015.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Supplemental Material
The supplemental material is available in the online version of
the article.
Note
1. While conducting this study, we also planned to examine the role
played by individual factors. We took the following variables into
account: (1) Rotter’s (1966) locus of control because previous
study results on the role of that factor as a determinant of obedience
in the Milgram paradigm are inconsistent and inconclusive (see
Blass, 1991), (2) the role of empathy, which, while from the theoretical perspective would seem a rather obvious “candidate” for the
role of moderator of obedience, has only been directly examined—
to the best of our knowledge—by Burger (2009) who demonstrated
that empathy influences the verbal expression of doubt by participants during the experiment but did not show any link with the
actual level of obedience, and (3) only in respect of men—acceptance of the norms of the culture of honor (Cohen, Nisbett, Bowdle,
& Schwartz, 1996; Nisbett & Cohen, 1996). We expected that men
who particularly strongly accept the rules of the culture of honor
would demonstrate very low rates of compliance in conditions
where the experimenter instructs them to zap a woman with
Social Psychological and Personality Science 8(8)
electricity. Because the results we achieved were inconclusive, and
this issue is not of fundamental importance to the main subject of
the article, we present both the scales applied and results on the
links between those personality characteristics and obedience in the
Online Appendix.
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Author Biographies
Dariusz Doliński (PhD, Warsaw University, Poland) is a Full Professor of Psychology in the SWPS University, Faculty of Psychology in
Wroclaw. He teaches social psychology and psychology of marketing.
He is the President of Polish Association of Social Psychology and
Editor-in-Chief of Polish Psychological Bulletin. He has published
12 books (including Techniques of social influence. The psychology
of gaining compliance) and more than 180 articles.
Tomasz Grzyb (PhD) is an Assistant Professor of Psychology in the
SWPS University, Faculty of Psychology in Wroclaw. He teaches statistics and methodology of research. He is a member of Ethics Committee of Polish Association of Social Psychology.
Michał Folwarczny is an MA student at the SWPS University,
Faculty of Psychology in Wroclaw.
Patrycja Grzybała is an MA student at the SWPS University, Faculty
of Psychology in Wroclaw.
Karolina Krzyszycha is an MA student at the SWPS University,
Faculty of Psychology in Wroclaw.
Karolina Martynowska is an MA student at the SWPS University,
Faculty of Psychology in Wroclaw.
Jakub Trojanowski is an MA student at the SWPS University,
Faculty of Psychology in Wroclaw.
Handling Editor: Simine Vazire