Was Stanley Milgram’s Study of
Obedience Unethical?
Christine Malone
Minnesota State University Moorhead
The Issue:
 Was Stanley Milgram’s obedience study unethical or was he
justified in subjecting the participants to a stressful situation
based on his debriefing/follow-up procedures and the
knowledge derived from the results?
Source
 Blass, T. (1999). The Milgram paradigm after 35 years: Some
things we now know about obedience to authority. Journal of
Applied Social Psychology, 29, 955-978.
Relationship to the Issue
 Blass objectively reviews research sparked by Milgram’s
obedience studies. So often Milgram’s set of obedience
experiments overshadows his other work and more
importantly, the work of other researchers in the area of
obedience. Blass reviews 35 years of research, providing a
status report on four questions surrounding obedience to
authority.
Main Objectives
 What is the nature of authority in the obedience experiment?
 Why do naïve respondents consistently underestimate
obedience rates?
 Are there gender differences in obedience?
 Have obedience rates changed over time?
Conclusions about the Nature of
Authority
 Milgram used “the legitimate authority” explanation—1) accept
authorities definition of situation and just perform as ordered and
2) shift into agentic state—relinquish responsibility to authority
and follow orders without regard to morality.
 Others have proposed an “expert-command authority” explanation
 Research has shown that obedience in Milgram’s paradigm seems
to be the result of both of these explanations.
 Blass (1992) himself attempts to separate these two
explanations—naïve observers considered the expert power
explanation as most likely, followed very closely by the legitimate
power explanation.
Conclusions about Underestimating
Obedience
 Why such a big contrast between our expectations of very
little obedience and the actual result of a majority of subjects
obeying?
 Prediction of experts before the original 1963 experiment—
Only 1 in 1,000 would go all the way to the end of the shock
meter.
 Blass (1991) found that naive observers still underestimate
obedience rates—just as in Milgram’s time
 Why? The fundamental attribution error.
Are There Gender Differences in
Obedience?
 Milgram (1974) varied gender and found same rate of
obedience (65%) in women as in men.
 Blass reviewed nine replications and eight of nine studies
found no gender differences.
 A difference that has been reported by Milgram and others—
self-reported tension of obedient women was higher than for
men.
Have Obedience Rates Changed
Over Time?
 Blass took six of Milgram’s studies and 14 replications by
other researchers and correlated the rank order of the year of
publication with the rank order of its obedience rate.
 Levels of obedience across studies ranged from 28% to 91%,
but there was no systematic relationship between when a
study was conducted and the amount of obedience obtained.
 Provides evidence against enlightenment effects.
Weaknesses/Propaganda
 References a lot of his own work…but does include the
work of many others
 Objective, well-reasoned overall
 Starts the paper with a provocative quote from Milgram
describing us as “puppets controlled by the strings of society.”
Counterargument
 Blass summarizes the results of carefully controlled
laboratory findings about deception, but what do they really
tell us about deception in real-life settings?
My Conclusions
 Milgram’s studies were definitely influential
 Gets people’s attention regarding ethical issues…but often
leads us to make snap judgments that do not include all
existing information or evidence.
 But Milgram’s studies should only be a starting point for our
investigation into ethics & the topic of deception.
Discussion
 What were some benefits that resulted from Milgram’s initial
experiments on destructive obedience? How did his studies
influence the field of social psychology?
 In hindsight it is easy to find problems with Milgram’s study.
But at the time of the experiment, did Milgram act
responsibly? reasonably? professionally?