Beginning in August 1961 at Yale, Stanley Milgram had participants (teachers) administer what they believed were increasing electric shocks, from 15 to 450 volts, to a learner (an unharmed confederate) each time a word-pair question was answered incorrectly, under verbal prompting from an experimenter to continue. The design tested how far ordinary people would go in obeying an authority figure's instruction to harm another person, in the shadow of the Holocaust and the Eichmann trial.
Facts
Disputed
Key FindingA later "engaged followership" reinterpretation by Alex Haslam and Stephen Reicher argues participants were not simply submitting to authority but were actively identifying with the experimenter's stated scientific goals, obeying most when the prod framed continuation as necessary for science rather than as a bare command. 1 This reframes what Milgram's own "obedience" account is taken to show without denying the extreme distress participants displayed. A separate, well-documented line of ethical criticism (raised at the time by Diana Baumrind and later by scholars including Gina Perry) concerns the deception used and the adequacy of debriefing; this atlas records both lines of critique as attributed scholarly positions. Key FindingA majority of participants (65 percent) obeyed instructions to administer the full 450-volt shock, and every participant went at least to 300 volts. 1 Method
Study DesignRandomized Controlled Trial 1 Participants FAQs
Would the Milgram obedience experiments be permitted today?
No, not in the original form.
Modern research ethics boards require informed consent and prohibit the level of deception and psychological distress the 1961 design used on participants who believed they were delivering real electric shocks. Contemporary replications, such as those using partial deception or simulated shocks, are redesigned specifically to stay within current ethical limits.
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Source Wikipedia: Stanley Milgram
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Source Wikipedia: Milgram experimenttier 2
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1. Wikipedia: Milgram experiment
Wikimedia FoundationLead section
The experiments began in August 1961 at Yale University, three months after the start of the trial of German Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem.
Alternative interpretations section
However, when the prod stresses the importance of the experiment for science (i.e. "The experiment requires you to continue"), people are more likely to obey.
lead section, study-design
Participants were led to believe that they were assisting in a fictitious experiment, in which they had to administer electric shocks to a "learner". These fake electric shocks gradually increased to levels that would have been fatal had they been real.
Wikipedia: Stanley Milgram
Wikimedia FoundationConducted By: Stanley Milgram, leadQuote, Conducted By: Stanley Milgram, lead
American social psychologist
Dissenting Readings (2 dissenting readings)
Key Finding
Gina Perry's archival research argues the standard obedience-to-authority reading overstates a clean finding: participants were not properly debriefed, leading to lasting emotional harm, many participants in fact criticized the study's ethics in their own questionnaire responses, and the experimenter's actual on-the-ground conduct departed from the published script in ways that may have driven compliance more than pure obedience to authority did.
A dissenting reading, from Gina PerryWikipedia: Milgram experiment, Wikimedia Foundation
Key Finding
Haslam and Reicher's engaged-followership account holds that Milgram's participants continued not out of blind obedience to authority but from active identification with the value of scientific inquiry, a reinterpretation that changes what the experiment is taken to demonstrate about ordinary cruelty.
A dissenting reading, from Alex Haslam and Stephen ReicherWikipedia: Milgram experiment, Wikimedia Foundation
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