The Psychology Behind Obedience to an Authority Figure

Milgram’s Shocking Experiment

Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist from Yale University, conducted a series of obedience experiments in 1960’s to understand the psychology behind obedience to an authority figure. He performed his first experiment in July 1961 a few months after the beginning of the trials of Nazi Criminal Adolf Eichmann. He was accused of organising the Holocaust, the genocide of European Jews, as the “final solution”. With these controversial experiments, Milgram intended to examine the arguments of Nuremberg World Criminals that were based on “obedience”. Although, they brutally slaughtered 45 millions of innocent people (including children) on command, their defence was that they were just following the orders from their superiors. After their justifications, Milgram came up with a question: “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” (Milgram, 1974).

(A group of child survivors behind a barbed wire fence at the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz.)

The Willingness to Obey

To assess if such a thing is credible, Milgram administers an experiment that evaluates people’s obedience to an authority figure. In this experiment, one participant is an actor working cooperatively with Milgram, and the other participant is the subject. At the same time, subjects don’t have the slightest idea that other participant is confederate of Milgram. Firstly, the participants draw straws to be the teacher or the learner, but the subject is purposefully the teacher. They are then placed in two separate rooms, unable to see but hear each other. The learner is in a room sitting on an electric chair, and the teacher sits in front of the electroshock machine with the experimenter. Next, the subject asks the learner to memorise matching words. For each mistake, he applies electroshock as instructed.

(The illustration of Milgram’s experiment)

The Turning Point of The Obedience Experiment

The severity of electroshocks intensifies with each mistake, and subjects can hear the escalating screams of confederate. As the voltage of the electroshocks increases, the actor starts to claim a heart disease, and when the voltage level reaches 300, he starts to bang on the wall begging to be released. Subsequently, he refuses to answer the questions. Following this, the subject is instructed to treat his silence as a mistake, and therefor deliver more shocks. As a result, most of the subject participants ask whether they should keep going. They don’t feel comfortable with the excessive pain they’re inflicting. However, the experimenter starts to give a number of commands to the subjects to continue, and the seriousness of the commands increases with each non-obedience.

“Please continue.”

“The experiment requires you to continue.”

“It is absolutely essential that you continue.”

“You have no other choice; you must go on.”

(Milgram with electroshock machine)

Justification of Unethical Behaviour

How do you think the subjects react? Do they end this cruelty? We would wish that majority of subjects refused to continue after hearing learner’s screams in pain. Sadly, 65% of participants went all the way to the final 450-volt shock and every single participant went until 300-volt shock. However, subjects were extremely disturbed by hurting someone, showing signs of extreme emotional stress and tension by sweating, stuttering, trembling, and biting their lips. At this point, an ethical issue holds the stage because an ethical experiment must ensure its participants’ well-being. Unfortunately, there wasn’t such an assurance in this one. Although subjects were uncomfortable doing this cruelty, they kept doing it in the existence of an authority figure. In other words, the experimenter was the authority giving commands to subjects to continue electroshocking learners, so that majority reached the final massive electroshock.

(Milgram, 1965, 00:23:22)

Explaining High Level of Obedience with Milgram’s Agency Theory

Milgram explained the behaviour of subjects with ‘agentic state’. It’s a way of obedience in which an individual performs the commands of an authority. As a result, “obey-ers” don’t accept the responsibility of consequences of their behaviour. Although the desired action of subjects was to terminate the electroshocks, they continued in the existence of an authority figure and blame was on it. The devilish policies executed in the Holocaust required plenty of people for implementation, and agentic shift was the best solution. The purpose of this article is not to acquit the war criminals, but to show the psychology behind people’s obedience to an authority figure even if it is an inhumane one. Ultimately, everyone’s responsible of their own behaviour and that’s why the court decided to sentence war criminals to death.

(The German defendants sitting during the Nuremberg trials)

For those interested:

Obedience by Milgram: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjLz6Q4ZQ7M

The Experimenter (2015): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3726704

References

20 most unethical experiments in psychology. (2017, December 19). https://www.onlinepsychologydegree.info/unethical-experiements-psychology/

Cherry, K. (2019, September 16). Why was the Milgram experiment so controversial? https://www.verywellmind.com/the-milgram-obedience-experiment-2795243.

Greenwood, J. (2018, July 25). How would people behave in Milgram’s experiment today? https://behavioralscientist.org/how-would-people-behave-in-milgrams-experiment-today/.

Mcleod, S. The milgram shock experiment. https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html.

Milgram experiment. (2021, February 20). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment#Ethics.

Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371–378. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0040525

Milgram, S. (1965). Obedience [DVD]. United States: Penn State University Audio-visual.

Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. London: Tavistock Publications.