The perils of obedience
The
Milgram
Shock
Experiment
(1961)
The results
What percentage of “teachers” do you think
continued to the maximum voltage of 450 volts?
Before the experiment, Milgram asked his
colleagues in the psychology department how many
subjects they thought would go all the way to 450
volts.
They all assumed that it would be 0-3 out of 100
subjects who would go all the way, and that these
would clearly be psychopaths.
The results
What were the actual results?
65% of participants –
basically 2 out of 3 – took it all
the way to 450 volts.
The Milgram Experiment
Are people basically aggressive and ready to inflict
pain as soon as they are given an excuse?
Did these participants come from a sadistic fringe of
society for some reason?
“The Banality of Evil”
“The Banality of Evil”
Variations on the experiment
Milgram performed this experiment many times, varying the
“set-up” slightly in each new version. The alternate versions
demonstrate that three things can strongly influence the
subject’s “compliance” with the experimenter’s instructions:
Responsibility: in some versions, the subject is allowed to decide
when to go on or to stop
Proximity: in some versions, the subject of the experiment is
brought closer to the “learner”; in others, to the experimenter.
Conformity: when other actors are introduced as fellow
“teachers,” they will either protest and leave, or comply with the
experimenter. Subjects often follow the lead of the actors.
Responsibility
When the subject can choose the voltage, the average
maximum level of shock chosen is 60 volts.
There were 40 subjects.
3 never went beyond the lowest possible shock (15 volts).
28 went no higher than 75 volts.
95% of subjects never went beyond the first loud protest
made at 150 volts (most of them not having gone beyond
75).
Two subjects (5%) did go into the sadistic range. One subject
went to 325 volts and one subject (evidently the
“psychopath”) did go all the way to 450 volts.
Proximity
When the “experimenter” is not present in the room with the
subject, compliance drops to 33%
When the “learner” is across the table from the “learner,”
compliance drops to 9%
When the subject must physically interact with the “learner”
( holding the “learner’s” hand on what you believe to be an
electrical plate) compliance drops to its lowest point.
On the other hand, when the “learner” is never seen at all by
the subject, compliance goes up to 90% … !
Conformity
In some versions of the experiment, Milgram placed actors
alongside the real subject of the experiment. They would
pretend to have been assigned the “teacher” role as well.
Sometimes, Milgram would have arranged for these actors to
comply with the experiment; other times, they would refuse to
continue.
Conformity
Compliance rises slightly if the other teachers appear willing to
continue.
But, when even one of the fellow “teachers” refuses to continue,
80% of subjects will also refuse.
When all of the “fellow teachers” refuse to continue, over 90% of
subjects will also refuse to continue.
Milgram’s conclusions
 “Only
following orders”
 “Not my brother’s keeper”
 Alienation and the Division of Labour
“Only following orders”
Most people find they do not have the power to resist
even the least threatening forms of authority.
p. 208
“Not my brother’s keeper”
Most people do not consider themselves responsible for evil that
other people do in their presence.
p. 211
The division of labour
At the end of the article, Milgram suggests that the
society in which we live encourages in many ways
our failure to feel personal moral responsibility.
Government bureaucracy and capitalist division of
labour alienate us from the origins and
consequences of our actions, leading us to feel that
we are a small and insignificant part of a larger
picture we can’t see and over which we have no
control.
Organized evil in society
pp. 211-212
Resistance
There is one glimmer of hope in the variations on
the experiment that Milgram tried.
Even one person standing up and refusing to
continue doubled the number of other participants
who refused to go on.
Rebels show us that there is an alternative to a
system we assume we can’t change. The first
person with the strength to say no gives strength to
many more people who have been going along on
auto-pilot, doing evil.
Waking up
It isn’t necessarily will power or even courage that people
need to stop participating in evil. Sometimes, they just need
to think about what they are doing.
One person saying no, and opting out of the evil can be
enough to “wake up” many others to the reality of the evil
to which they are contributing.
The actor who refused to continue in some variants of the
Milgram experiment didn’t give the other participants
more courage or will power. Instead, he “raised their
consciousness,” making them aware that what they were
doing was wrong, and that resistance was both possible
and in this case even easy.
The value of the rebel
One person staying clear-headed and lucid among the
herd, and prepared to speak up and bear witness to what
is really going on, even in the face of authority and peer
pressure is sometimes all it takes to put an end to
organized evil. But that is what it takes.
Quiz (2 marks)
1. Explain the difference between formal and
substantive equality; give an example.
2. Define and explain the Original Position and The
Veil of Ignorance; give an example of a situation
where one might try to use them.
3. What is the idea of The Banality of Evil, as used
by Hannah Arendt and Stanley Milgram?
4. According to Stanley Milgram, how does Karl
Marx’s concept of the Division of Labour relate to
the findings in his shock experiment?