Obedience to Authority, by Stanley Milgram
Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2013 9:39 pm
OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY -- AN EXPERIMENTAL VIEW
by Stanley Milgram, © 1974 by Stanley Milgram
The Mike Wallace interview in Chapter 15 is © 1969 by the New York Times Company
Foreword © 2009 by Philip Zimbardo
Cover Design by Milan Bozic
Author Photograph © Eric Kroll
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
Table of Contents
• Opening Pages
• Foreword to the Harper Perennial Modern Thought Edition, by Philip Zimbardo
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. The Dilemma of Obedience
• 2. Method of Inquiry
o Obtaining Participants for the Study
o Locale and Personnel
o Procedure
o Learning Task
o Shock Generator
o Sample Shock
o Shock Instructions
o Experimenter Feedback
o Special Prods
o Feedback from the Victim
o Measures
o Interview and Debriefing
o Recapitulation
• 3. Expected Behavior
• 4. Closeness of the Victim
o Bringing the Victim Closer
1. Empathic cues
2. Denial and Narrowing of the Cognitive Field
3. Reciprocal Fields.
4. Experienced unity of act
5. Incipient group-formation
6. Acquired behavior dispositions
o Unexpected Behavior
• 5. Individuals Confront Authority
o Bruno Batta, Welder (in Experiment 4)
o Professor of Old Testament (in Experiment 3)
o Jack Washington, Drill Press Operator (in Experiment 2)
o Jan Rensaleer, Industrial Engineer (in Experiment 2)
o Morris Braverman, Social Worker (in Experiment 2)
• 6. Further Variations and Controls
o Experiment 5: A New Base-Line Condition
o Experiment 6: Change of Personnel
o Experiment 7: Closeness of Authority
o Experiment 8: Women as Subjects
o Experiment 9: The Victim's Limited Contract
o Experiment 10: Institutional Context
o Experiment 11: Subject Free to Choose Shock Level
• 7. Individuals Confront Authority II
o Fred Prozi, Unemployed (in Experiment 5)
o Karen Dontz, Nurse (in Experiment 8)
o Elinor Rosenblum, Housewife (in Experiment 8)
o Gretchen Brandt, Medical Technician (in Experiment 8)
o Pasqual Gino, Water inspector (in Experiment 7)
• 8. Role Permutations
o Experiment 12: Learner Demands to Be Shocked
o Experiment 13: An Ordinary Man Gives Orders
o Experiment 13a: The Subject as Bystander
o Experiment 14: Authority as Victim: An Ordinary Man Commanding
o Double Authority
o Experiment 15: Two Authorities: Contradictory Commands
o Experiment 16: Two Authorities: One as Victim
o Comparison with Experiment 14
o Comparison with Experiment 15
• 9. Group Effects
o Distinction Between Conformity and Obedience
o Experiment 17: Two Peers Rebel
Technique
Behavior of confederates
Reactions to the defiant peers
o Experiment 18: A Peer Administers Shocks
• 10. Why Obedience? -- An Analysis
o The Survival Value of Hierarchy
o A Cybernetic Viewpoint
o Hierarchical Structuring
o Variability
o The Agentic Shift
• 11. The Process of Obedience: Applying the Analysis to the Experiment
o Antecedent Conditions of Obedience
Family
Institutional Setting
Rewards
Immediate Antecedent Conditions
o The Agentic State
Tuning
Redefining the Meaning of the Situation
Loss of Responsibility
Self-image
Commands and the Agentic State
o Binding Factors
Sequential Nature of the Action
Situational Obligations
o Anxiety
• 12. Strain and Disobedience
o Strain
Sources of Strain
Strain and Buffers
o Resolution of Strain
Physical Conversion
Dissent
Disobedience
• 13. An Alternative Theory: Is Aggression the Key?
• 14. Problems of Method
• 15. Epilogue
o Obedience and the War in Vietnam
• Appendix I: Problems of Ethics in Research
• Appendix II: Patterns Among Individuals
• Notes
• References
• Index
Experiments
1. Remote-Victim
2. Voice-Feedback
3. Proximity
4. Touch-Proximity
5. A New Base-Line Condition
6. Change of Personnel
7. Closeness of Authority
8. Women as Subjects
9. The Victim's Limited Contract
10. Institutional Context
11. Subject Free to Choose Shock Level
12. Learner Demands to Be Shocked
13. An Ordinary Man Gives Orders
13a. The Subject As Bystander
14. Authority as Victim: An Ordinary Man Commanding
15. Two Authorities: Contradictory Commands
16. Two Authorities: One as Victim
17. Two Peers Rebel
18. A Peer Administers Shocks
by Stanley Milgram, © 1974 by Stanley Milgram
The Mike Wallace interview in Chapter 15 is © 1969 by the New York Times Company
Foreword © 2009 by Philip Zimbardo
Cover Design by Milan Bozic
Author Photograph © Eric Kroll
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.
Table of Contents
• Opening Pages
• Foreword to the Harper Perennial Modern Thought Edition, by Philip Zimbardo
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. The Dilemma of Obedience
• 2. Method of Inquiry
o Obtaining Participants for the Study
o Locale and Personnel
o Procedure
o Learning Task
o Shock Generator
o Sample Shock
o Shock Instructions
o Experimenter Feedback
o Special Prods
o Feedback from the Victim
o Measures
o Interview and Debriefing
o Recapitulation
• 3. Expected Behavior
• 4. Closeness of the Victim
o Bringing the Victim Closer
1. Empathic cues
2. Denial and Narrowing of the Cognitive Field
3. Reciprocal Fields.
4. Experienced unity of act
5. Incipient group-formation
6. Acquired behavior dispositions
o Unexpected Behavior
• 5. Individuals Confront Authority
o Bruno Batta, Welder (in Experiment 4)
o Professor of Old Testament (in Experiment 3)
o Jack Washington, Drill Press Operator (in Experiment 2)
o Jan Rensaleer, Industrial Engineer (in Experiment 2)
o Morris Braverman, Social Worker (in Experiment 2)
• 6. Further Variations and Controls
o Experiment 5: A New Base-Line Condition
o Experiment 6: Change of Personnel
o Experiment 7: Closeness of Authority
o Experiment 8: Women as Subjects
o Experiment 9: The Victim's Limited Contract
o Experiment 10: Institutional Context
o Experiment 11: Subject Free to Choose Shock Level
• 7. Individuals Confront Authority II
o Fred Prozi, Unemployed (in Experiment 5)
o Karen Dontz, Nurse (in Experiment 8)
o Elinor Rosenblum, Housewife (in Experiment 8)
o Gretchen Brandt, Medical Technician (in Experiment 8)
o Pasqual Gino, Water inspector (in Experiment 7)
• 8. Role Permutations
o Experiment 12: Learner Demands to Be Shocked
o Experiment 13: An Ordinary Man Gives Orders
o Experiment 13a: The Subject as Bystander
o Experiment 14: Authority as Victim: An Ordinary Man Commanding
o Double Authority
o Experiment 15: Two Authorities: Contradictory Commands
o Experiment 16: Two Authorities: One as Victim
o Comparison with Experiment 14
o Comparison with Experiment 15
• 9. Group Effects
o Distinction Between Conformity and Obedience
o Experiment 17: Two Peers Rebel
Technique
Behavior of confederates
Reactions to the defiant peers
o Experiment 18: A Peer Administers Shocks
• 10. Why Obedience? -- An Analysis
o The Survival Value of Hierarchy
o A Cybernetic Viewpoint
o Hierarchical Structuring
o Variability
o The Agentic Shift
• 11. The Process of Obedience: Applying the Analysis to the Experiment
o Antecedent Conditions of Obedience
Family
Institutional Setting
Rewards
Immediate Antecedent Conditions
o The Agentic State
Tuning
Redefining the Meaning of the Situation
Loss of Responsibility
Self-image
Commands and the Agentic State
o Binding Factors
Sequential Nature of the Action
Situational Obligations
o Anxiety
• 12. Strain and Disobedience
o Strain
Sources of Strain
Strain and Buffers
o Resolution of Strain
Physical Conversion
Dissent
Disobedience
• 13. An Alternative Theory: Is Aggression the Key?
• 14. Problems of Method
• 15. Epilogue
o Obedience and the War in Vietnam
• Appendix I: Problems of Ethics in Research
• Appendix II: Patterns Among Individuals
• Notes
• References
• Index
Experiments
1. Remote-Victim
2. Voice-Feedback
3. Proximity
4. Touch-Proximity
5. A New Base-Line Condition
6. Change of Personnel
7. Closeness of Authority
8. Women as Subjects
9. The Victim's Limited Contract
10. Institutional Context
11. Subject Free to Choose Shock Level
12. Learner Demands to Be Shocked
13. An Ordinary Man Gives Orders
13a. The Subject As Bystander
14. Authority as Victim: An Ordinary Man Commanding
15. Two Authorities: Contradictory Commands
16. Two Authorities: One as Victim
17. Two Peers Rebel
18. A Peer Administers Shocks
Many of the people studied in the experiment were in some sense against what they did to the learner, and many protested even while they obeyed. But between thoughts, words, and the critical step of disobeying a malevolent authority lies another ingredient, the capacity for transforming beliefs and values into action. Some subjects were totally convinced of the wrongness of what they were doing but could not bring themselves to make an open break with authority. Some derived satisfaction from their thoughts and felt that -- within themselves, at least -- they had been on the side of the angels. What they failed to realize is that subjective feelings are largely irrelevant to the moral issue at hand so long as they are not transformed into action. Political control is effected through action. The attitudes of the guards at a concentration camp are of no consequence when in fact they are allowing the slaughter of innocent men to take place before them. Similarly, so-called “intellectual resistance” in occupied Europe -- in which persons by a twist of thought felt that they had defied the invader -- was merely indulgence in a consoling psychological mechanism. Tyrannies are perpetuated by diffident men who do not possess the courage to act out their beliefs. Time and again in the experiment people disvalued what they were doing but could not muster the inner resources to translate their values into action.
A variation of the basic experiment depicts a dilemma more common than the one outlined above: the subject was not ordered to push the trigger that shocked the victim, but merely to perform a subsidiary act (administering the word-pair test) before another subject actually delivered the shock. In this situation, 37 of 40 adults from the New Haven area continued to the highest shock level on the generator. Predictably, subjects excused their behavior by saying that the responsibility belonged to the man who actually pulled the switch. This may illustrate a dangerously typical situation in complex society: it is psychologically easy to ignore responsibility when one is only an intermediate link in a chain of evil action but is far from the final consequences of the action. Even Eichmann was sickened when he toured the concentration camps, but to participate in mass murder he had only to sit at a desk and shuffle papers. At the same time the man in the camp who actually dropped Cyclon-B into the gas chambers was able to justify his behavior on the grounds that he was only following orders from above. Thus there is a fragmentation of the total human act; no one man decides to carry out the evil act and is confronted with its consequences. The person who assumes full responsibility for the act has evaporated. Perhaps this is the most common characteristic of socially organized evil in modern society.
The problem of obedience, therefore, is not wholly psychological. The form and shape of society and the way it is developing have much to do with it. There was a time, perhaps, when men were able to give a fully human response to any situation because they were fully absorbed in it as human beings. But as soon as there was a division of labor among men, things changed. Beyond a certain point, the breaking up of society into people carrying out narrow and very special jobs takes away from the human quality of work and life. A person does not get to see the whole situation but only a small part of it, and is thus unable to act without some kind of over-all direction. He yields to authority but in doing so is alienated from his own actions.
***
Any feature that reduces the psychological closeness between the subject’s action and the consequence of that action also reduces the level of strain. Any means of breaking down or diluting the experienced meaning of the act -- I am hurting a man -- makes the action easier to perform. Thus, creating physical distance between the subject and victim, and dampening the painful cries of the victim, reduces strain. The shock generator itself constitutes an important buffer, a precise and impressive instrument that creates a sharp discontinuity between the ease required to depress one of its thirty switches and the strength of impact on the victim. The depression of a switch is precise, scientific, and impersonal. If our subjects had to strike the victim with their fists, they would be more reluctant to do so. Nothing is more dangerous to human survival than malevolent authority combined with the dehumanizing effects of buffers. There is a contrast here between what is logical and what is psychological. On a purely quantitative basis, it is more wicked to kill ten thousand by hurling an artillery shell into a town, than to kill one man by pommeling him with a stone, yet the latter is by far the more psychologically difficult act. Distance, time, and physical barriers neutralize the moral sense. There are virtually no psychological inhibitions against coastal bombardment or dropping napalm from a plane twenty thousand feet overhead. As for the man who sits in front of a button that will release Armageddon, depressing it has about the same emotional force as calling for an elevator. While technology has augmented man’s will by allowing him the means for the remote destruction of others, evolution has not had a chance to build inhibitors against these remote forms of aggression to parallel those powerful inhibitors that are so plentiful and abundant in face-to-face confrontations.
-- "Obedience to Authority," by Stanley Milgram