What I Learned Today - The Milgram Experiment The experiment measured...

20th February 2008

Video with 3 notes

The Milgram Experiment

The experiment measured the willingness of an individual to obey an authority figure whose instructions conflicted with his own conscience - i.e. hurt someone, rip someone off, or even kill someone because you are told to do so.

Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, designed the study during the trial of Nazi war criminal Aldolf Eichmann (referred to as the architect of the Holocaust). He sought to answer the question: “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them accomplices?”

The experiment (also described in the clip): Volunteers were told they were taking part in an experiment to improve memory – looking at the role of punishment in learning. The volunteer was seated at a shock generator switch board with a range of voltages. The volunteer’s co-subject was put in an adjacent room strapped to a chair with an electrode on his wrist. The co-subject memorized and recited lists and every time he made a mistake the volunteer flipped a switch for a shock, increasing the voltage each time. The co-subject cried out in pain louder and louder, eventually fainting. The scientist told the volunteer that he must continue administering the shocks. What the volunteer did not know is the co-subject was an actor and there were no shocks, and that he, the volunteer, was actually the subject of the experiment.

More than 2/3 of the volunteers administered the highest shocks when ordered to do so by the experimenter.

Milgram concluded that when people are ordered to do something by someone they view in authority, most will obey even when doing so violates their consciences.

I first saw this in my undergrad Psychology class. It was highlighted in the movie I just watched, about the corruption that was Enron, as a potential reason for, well, the corruption that was Enron.

Update: Per Yan, this experiment was recreated in The Heist, a documentary where Derren Brown, magician and mentalist, psychologically manipulates normal people to commit armed robbery.