The Milgram Experiment Explained

*Originally published on 5/31/12



After World War II, German soldiers justified their actions by saying that "they were just following orders". Not surprisingly, many people were, and still are, dismissive of this particular argument.

Stanley Milgram, a Yale professor, however, decided to test how well this mentality held up. He came up with an experiment that is especially notable to those who study or have studied human psychology.

The rather obviously named "Milgram experiment" is the test where a person is told to act as a "teacher" feeding words to a "learner", a person who is, in reality, an accomplice in the experiment. The learner would go into a separate room, where he would be strapped into a chair and hooked up to electrodes. Milgram himself would don an official looking lab coat and explain that the "teacher" would feed words through a two-way communication device. Each word would be linked to another word that the learner would have to use as a response.

The teacher is told that if the learner didn't respond with the word that corresponded with the word being read, the learner would be given an electric shock. Of course, (s)he isn't, it's all a charade, but the teacher is led to believe that the whole scenario is on the up and up. More than that, with each incorrect response, the voltage would increase by a small margin, supposedly inflicting more pain on the victim.

One would think that the teacher would eventually stop and refuse to continue on moral grounds. However, while video footage shows that many protested at certain points throughout the scenario, a majority of them caved in to authority and continued, often going so far as to dish out the maximum voltage.

There are a variety of factors at play here. Some subjects rationalize it by saying that the voltage is only slightly worse than what came before it. This allows the person to steadily increase the voltage to ridiculously high numbers with no real qualms. It's sort of like the old "frog in the boiling water" scenario. A drastic jump would've resulted in people putting their foot down and stopping, but the gradual voltage increase makes it seem more tolerable. This might be a valid point were it not for the fact that the recorded screams become more anguished as the experiment continues and the learner's "pleas" become more desperate. I know my idealism contradicts the results of this experiment, but you'd think that it would be enough to get them to be firm about refusing to continue.

The fact that the study was done by a professor at Yale also seemed to play a role. It gave the test a sense of legitimacy that other scientists or professors might not have been able to replicate. This was confirmed to a certain extent when the experiment was replicated with professors from less reputable universities. Suffice it to say, it didn't take quite as well.

The scenario also gives the teacher a convenient scapegoat. It has been surmised that the fact that the professor was the one running the experiment relieves the teacher of any guilt he or she may have felt about it.

The experiment is renowned, not just for the shocking (pun not intended..well maybe a little) insight into the human psyche, but for the controversy that resulted due to the stress that the scenario put on the subject/teacher. One subject was even traumatized by what he endured. The ethical arguments regarding the experiment continue to this day. Nevertheless, it is something of a landmark in terms of learning about human psychology.