Obedience to Authority, by Stanley Milgram

Your relationship with government is simple: government knows everything about you, and you know nothing about government. In practice this means government can do whatever it wants to you before you know it's going to happen. Government policy makers think this is a good way of ensuring citizen compliance. Thus, all of these investigations are retrospective -- they look back at the squirrely shit that government has pulled, and occasionally wring their hands about trying to avoid it happening in the future. Not inspiring reading, but necessary if you are to face the cold reality that Big Brother is more than watching.

Re: Obedience to Authority, by Stanley Milgram

Postby admin » Thu Oct 17, 2013 10:42 pm

Appendix I: Problems of Ethics in Research

The purpose of the inquiry described here was to study obedience and disobedience to authority under conditions that permitted careful scrutiny of the phenomenon. A person was told by an experimenter to obey a set of increasingly callous orders, and our interest was to see when he would stop obeying. An element of theatrical staging was needed to set the proper conditions for observing the behavior, and technical illusions were freely employed (such as the fact that the victim only appeared to be shocked). Beyond this, most of what occurred in the laboratory was what had been discovered, rather than what had been planned.

For some critics, however, the chief horror of the experiment was not that the subjects obeyed but that the experiment was carried out at all. Among professional psychologists a certain polarization occurred. [31] The experiment was both highly praised and harshly criticized. In 1964, Dr. Diana Baumrind attacked the experiments in the American Psychologist, in which I later published this reply:

. . . In a recent issue of American Psychologist, a critic raised a number of questions concerning the obedience report. She expressed concern for the welfare of subjects who served in the experiment, and wondered whether adequate measures were taken to protect the participants.

At the outset, the critic confuses the unanticipated outcome of an experiment with its basic procedure. She writes, for example, as if the production of stress in our subjects was an intended and deliberate effect of the experimental manipulation. There are many laboratory procedures specifically designed to create stress (Lazarus, 1964), but the obedience paradigm was not one of them. The extreme tension induced in some subjects was unexpected. Before conducting the experiment, the procedures were discussed with many colleagues, and none anticipated the reactions that subsequently took place. Foreknowledge of results can never be the invariable accompaniment of an experimental probe. Understanding grows because we examine situations in which the end is unknown. An investigator unwilling to accept this degree of risk must give up the idea of scientific inquiry.

Moreover, there was every reason to expect, prior to actual experimentation, that subjects would refuse to follow the experimenter's instructions beyond the point where the victim protested; many colleagues and psychiatrists were questioned on this point, and they virtually all felt this would be the case. Indeed, to initiate an experiment in which the critical measure hangs on disobedience, one must start with a belief in certain spontaneous resources in men that enable them to overcome pressure from authority.

It is true that after a reasonable number of subjects had been exposed to the procedures, it became evident that some would go to the end of the shock board, and some would experience stress. That point, it seems to me, is the first legitimate juncture at which one could even start to wonder whether or not to abandon the study. But momentary excitement is not the same as harm. As the experiment progressed there was no indication of injurious effects in the subjects; and as the subjects themselves strongly endorsed the experiment, the judgment I made was to continue the investigation.

Is not the criticism based as much on the unanticipated findings as on the method? The findings were that some subjects performed in what appeared to be a shockingly immoral way. If, instead, everyone of the subjects had broken off at "slight shock," or at the first sign of the learner's discomfort, the results would have been pleasant, and reassuring, and who would protest?

A very important aspect of the procedure occurred at the end of the experimental session. A careful post-experimental treatment was administered to all subjects. The exact content of the dehoax varied from condition to condition and with increasing experience on our part. At the very least, all subjects were told that the victim had not received dangerous electric shocks. Each subject had a friendly reconciliation with the unharmed victim, and an extended discussion with the experimenter. The experiment was explained to the defiant subjects in a way that supported their decision to disobey the experimenter. Obedient subjects were assured of the fact that their behavior was entirely normal and that their feelings of conflict or tension were shared by other participants. Subjects were told that they would receive a comprehensive report at the conclusion of the experimental series. In some instances, additional detailed, and lengthy discussions of the experiments were also carried out with individual subjects.

When the experimental series was complete, subjects received a written report which presented details of the experimental procedure and results. Again, their own part in the experiments was treated in a dignified way and their behavior in the experiment respected. All subjects received a follow-up questionnaire regarding their participation in the research, which again allowed expression of thoughts and feelings about their behavior.

The replies to the questionnaire confirmed my impression that participants felt positively toward the experiment. In its quantitative aspect (see Table 8), 84% of the subjects stated they were glad to have been in the experiment; 15% indicated neutral feelings; and 1.3% indicated negative feelings. To be sure, such findings are to be interpreted cautiously, but they cannot be disregarded.

Further, four-fifths of the subjects felt that more experiments of this sort should be carried out, and 74%. indicated that they had learned something of personal importance as a result of being in the study.

The debriefing and assessment procedures were carried out as a matter of course, and were not stimulated by any observation of special risk in the experimental procedure. In my judgment, at no point were subjects exposed to danger and at no point did they run the risk of injurious effects resulting from participation. If it had been otherwise, the experiment would have been terminated at once.

The critic states that, after he has performed in the experiment, the subject cannot justify his behavior and must bear the full brunt of his actions. By and large it does not work this way. The same mechanisms that allow the subject to perform the act, to obey rather than to defy the experimenter, transcend the moment of performance and continue to justify his behavior for him. The same viewpoint the subject takes while performing the actions is the viewpoint from which he later sees his behavior, that is, the perspective of "carrying out the task assigned by the person in authority."

[img]Table%208.%20Excerpt%20from%20Questionnaire%20Used%20in%20a%20Follow-up%20Study%20of%20the%20Obedience%20Research[/img]

Image
Note: Ninety-two percent of the subjects returned the questionnaire. The characteristics of the nonrespondents were checked against the respondents. They differed from the respondents only with regard to age; younger people were overrepresented in the nonresponding group.

Because the idea of shocking the victim is repugnant, there is a tendency among those who hear of the design to say "people will not do it." When the results are made known, this attitude is expressed as "if they do it they will not be able to live with themselves afterward." These two forms of denying the experimental findings are equally inappropriate misreadings of the facts of human social behavior. Many subjects do, indeed, obey to the end, and there is no indication of injurious effects.

The absence of injury is a minimal condition of experimentation; there can be, however, an important positive side to participation. The critic suggests that subjects derived no benefit from being in the obedience study, but this is false. By their statements and actions, subjects indicated that they had learned a good deal, and many felt gratified to have taken part in scientific research they considered to be of significance. A year after his participation one subject wrote: "This experiment has strengthened my belief that man should avoid harm to his fellow man even at the risk of violating authority."

Another stated: "To me, the experiment pointed up the extent to which each individual should have or discover firm ground on which to base his decisions, no matter how trivial they appear to be. I think people should think more deeply about themselves and their relation to their world and to other people. If this experiment serves to jar people out of complacency, it will have served its end."

These statements are illustrative of a broad array of appreciative and insightful comments by those who participated.

The 5-page report sent to each subject on the completion of the experimental series was specifically designed to enhance the value of his experience. It laid out the broad conception of the experimental program as well as the logic of its design. It described the results of a dozen of the experiments, discussed the causes of tension, and attempted to indicate the possible significance of the experiment. Subjects responded enthusiastically; many indicated a desire to be in further experimental research. This report was sent to all subjects several years ago. The care with which it was prepared does not support the critic's assertion that the experimenter was indifferent to the value subjects derived from their participation.

The critic fears that participants will be alienated from psychological experiments because of the intensity of experience associated with laboratory procedures. My own observation is that subjects more commonly respond with distaste to the "empty" laboratory hour, in which cardboard procedures are employed, and the only possible feeling upon emerging from the laboratory is that one has wasted time in a patently trivial and useless exercise.

The subjects in the obedience experiment, on the whole, felt quite differently about their participation. They viewed the experience as an opportunity to learn something of importance about themselves, and more generally, about the conditions of human action.

A year after the experimental program was completed, I initiated an additional follow-up study. In this connection an impartial medical examiner, experienced in outpatient treatment, interviewed 40 experimental subjects. The examining psychiatrist focused on those subjects he felt would be most likely to have suffered consequences from participation, His aim was to identify possible injurious effects resulting from the experiment. He concluded that, although extreme stress had been experienced by several subjects, "none was found by this interviewer to show signs of having been harmed by his experience.... Each subject seemed to handle his task (in the experiment) in a manner consistent with well-established patterns of behavior. No evidence was found of any traumatic reactions." Such evidence ought to be weighed before judging the experiment.

At root, the critic believes that it is not proper to test obedience in this situation, because she construes it as one in which there is no reasonable alternative to obedience. In adopting this view, she has lost sight of this fact: A substantial proportion of subjects do disobey. By their example, disobedience is shown to be a genuine possibility, one that is in no sense ruled out by the general structure of the experimental situation.

The critic is uncomfortable with the high level of obedience obtained in the first experiment. In the condition she focused on, 65% of the subjects obeyed to the end. However, her sentiment does not take into account that within the general framework of the psychological experiment obedience varied enormously from one condition to the next. In some variations, 90% of the subjects disobeyed. It seems to be not only the fact of an experiment, but the particular structure of elements within the experimental situation that accounts for rates of obedience and disobedience. And these elements were varied systematically in the program of research.

A concern with human dignity is based on a respect for a man's potential to act morally. The critic feels that the experimenter made the subject shock the victim. This conception is alien to my view. The experimenter tells the subject to do something. But between the command and the outcome there is a paramount force, the acting person who may obey or disobey. I started with the belief that every person who came to the laboratory was free to accept or to reject the dictates of authority. This view sustains a conception of human dignity insofar as it sees in each man a capacity for choosing his own behavior. And as it turned out, many subjects did, indeed, choose to reject the experimenter's commands, providing a powerful affirmation of human ideals.

The experiment is also criticized on the grounds that "it could easily effect an alteration in the subject's ... ability to trust adult authorities in the future." ... However, the experimenter is not just any authority: He is an authority who tells the subject to act harshly and inhumanely against another man. I would consider it of the highest value if participation in the experiment could, indeed, inculcate a skepticism of this kind of authority. Here, perhaps, a difference in philosophy emerges most clearly. The critic views the subject as a passive creature, completely controlled by the experimenter. I started from a different viewpoint. A person who comes to the laboratory is an active, choosing adult, capable of accepting or rejecting the prescriptions for action addressed to him. The critic sees the effect of the experiment as undermining the subject's trust of authority. I see it as a potentially valuable experience insofar as it makes people aware of the problem of indiscriminate submission to authority.

Yet another criticism occurred in Dannie Abse's play, The Dogs of Pavlov, which appeared in London in 1971 and which uses the obedience experiment as its central dramatic theme. At the play's climax, Kurt, a major character in the play, repudiates the experimenter for treating him as a guinea pig. In his introduction to the play, Abse especially condemns the illusions employed in the experiment, terming the setup "bullshit," "fraudulent," "cheat." At the same time, he apparently admires the dramatic quality of the experiment. And he allowed by rejoinder to appear in the foreword to his book. I wrote to him:

I do feel you are excessively harsh in your language when condemning my use of illusion in the experiment. As a dramatist, you surely understand that illusion may serve a revelatory function, and indeed, the very possibility of theater is founded on the benign use of contrivance.

One could, viewing a theatrical performance, claim that the playwright has cheated, tricked, and defrauded the audience, for he presents as old men individuals who are, when the greasepaint is removed, quite young; men presented as physicians who in reality are merely actors knowing nothing about medicine, etc., etc. But this assertion of "bullshit," "cheat," "fraud" would be silly, would it not, for it does not take into account how those exposed to the theater's illusions feel about them. The fact is that the audience accepts the necessity of illusion for the sake of entertainment, intellectual enrichment, and all of the other benefits of the theatrical experience. And it is their acceptance of these procedures that gives you warrant for the contrivances you rely upon.

So I will not say that you cheated, tricked, and defrauded your audience. But, I would hold the same claim for the experiment. Misinformation is employed in the experiment; illusion is used when necessary in order to set the stage for the revelation of certain difficult-to-get-at truths; and these procedures are justified for one reason only: they are, in the end, accepted and endorsed by those who are exposed to them....

When the experiment was explained to subjects they responded to it positively, and most felt it was an hour well spent. If it had been otherwise, if subjects ended the hour with bitter recriminatory feelings, the experiment could not have proceeded.

This judgment is based, first, on the numerous conversations I have had with subjects immediately after their participation in the experiment. Such conversations can reveal a good deal, but what they showed most was how readily the experience is assimilated to the normal frame of things. Moreover, subjects were friendly rather than hostile, curious rather than denunciatory, and in no sense demeaned by the experience. This was my general impression, and it was later supported by formal procedures undertaken to assess the subjects' reaction to the experiment.

The central moral justification for allowing a procedure of the sort used in my experiment is that it is judged acceptable by those who have taken part in it. Moreover, it was the salience of this fact throughout that constituted the chief moral warrant for the continuation of the experiments.

This fact is crucial to any appraisal of the experiment from an ethical standpoint.

Imagine an experiment in which a person's little finger was routinely snipped off in the course of a laboratory hour. Not only is such an experiment reprehensible, but within hours the study would be brought to a halt as outraged participants pressed their complaints on the university administration, and legal measures were invoked to restrain the experimenter. When a person has been abused, he knows it, and will quite properly react against the source of such mistreatment.

Criticism of the experiment that does not take account of the tolerant reaction of the participants is hollow. This applies particularly to criticism centering on the use of technical illusions (or "deception," as the critics prefer to say) that fails to relate this detail to the central fact that subjects find the device acceptable. Again, the participant, rather than the external critic, must be the ultimate source of judgment.

While some persons construe the experimenter to be acting in terms of deceit, manipulation, and chicanery, it is, as you should certainly appreciate, also possible to see him as a dramatist who creates scenes of revelatory power, and who brings participants into them. So perhaps we are not so far apart in the kind of work we do. I do grant there is an important difference in that those exposed to your theatrical illusions expect to confront them, while my subjects are not forewarned. However, whether it is unethical to pursue truths through the use of my form of dramaturgical device cannot be answered in the abstract. It depends entirely on the response of those who have been exposed to such procedures.

One further point; the obedient subject does not blame himself for shocking the Victim, because the act does not originate in the self. It originates in authority, and the worst the obedient subject says of himself is that he must learn to resist authority more effectively in the future.

That the experiment has stimulated this thought in some subjects is, to my mind, a satisfying. consequence of the inquiry. An illustrative case is provided by the experience of a young man who took part in a Princeton replication of the obedience experiment, conducted in 1964. He was fully obedient. On October 27, 1970, he wrote to me:

"Participation in the 'shock experiment' ... has had a great impact on my life...

"'When 1 was a subject in 1964, though I believed that I was hurting someone, I was totally unaware of why I was doing so. Few people ever realize when they are acting according to their own beliefs and when they are meekly submitting to authority.... To permit myself to be drafted with the understanding that I am submitting to authority's demand to do something very wrong would make me frightened of myself. I am fully prepared to go to jail if I am not granted Conscientious Objector status. Indeed, it is the only course I could take to be faithful to what I believe. My only hope is that members of my board act equally according to their conscience...."


He inquired whether any other participants had reacted similarly, and whether, in my opinion, participation in the study could have this effect.

I replied:

"The experiment does, of course, deal with the dilemma individuals face when they are confronted with conflicting demands of authority and conscience, and I am glad that your participation in the study has brought you to a deeper personal consideration of these issues. Several participants have informed me that their own sensitivity to the problem of submission to authority was increased as a result of their experience in the study. If the experiment has heightened your awareness of the problem of indiscriminate submission to authority, it will have performed an important function. If you believe strongly that it is wrong to kill others in the service of your country, then you ought certainly to press vigorously for CO status, and I am deeply hopeful that your sincerity in this matter will be recognized."


A few months later he wrote again. He indicated, first, that the draft board was not very impressed with the effect of his participation in the experiment, but he was granted CO status nonetheless. He writes:

"The experience of the interview doesn't lessen my strong belief of the great impact of the experiment on my life....

" ... You have discovered one of the most important causes of all the trouble in this world.... I am grateful to have been able to provide you with a part of the information necessary for that discovery. I am delighted to have acted, by refusing to serve in the Armed Forces, in a manner which people must act if these problems are to be solved.

"With sincere thanks for your contribution to my life."


In a world in which action is often clouded with ambiguity, I nonetheless feel constrained to give greater heed to this man, who actually participated in the study, than to a distant critic. For disembodied moralizing is not the issue, but only the human response of those who have participated in the experiment. And that response not only endorses the procedures employed, but overwhelmingly calls for deeper inquiry to illuminate the issues of obedience and disobedience.

Over the years, numerous statements in support of the experiment have appeared in print.

Dr. Milton Erikson, a well-known clinical psychologist, wrote:

That [Milgram's] pioneer work in this field is attacked as being unethical, unjustifiable, uninformative, or any other derogative dismissal is to be expected, simply because people like to shut their eyes to undesirable behavior, preferring to investigate memory, forgetting of nonsense syllables...

Milgram is making a momentous and meaningful contribution to our knowledge of human behavior .... When Milgram's initial study appeared, he was already well aware that an area of scientific investigation was being opened up which would lead to reproaches and condemnation.... To engage in such studies as Milgram has requires strong men with strong scientific faith and a willingness to discover that to man himself, not to "the devil" belongs the responsibility for and the control of his inhumane actions.

(International Journal of Psychiatry, October 1968, pp. 278-79.)


Dr. Amitai Etzioni, Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, wrote:

... Milgram's experiment seems to me one of the best carried out in this generation. It shows that the often stated opposition between meaningful, interesting humanistic study and accurate, empirical quantitative research is a false one. The two perspectives can be combined to the benefit of both....

(International Journal of Psychiatry, October 1968, pp. 278-79.)


Professor Herbert Kelman had written a thoughtful article on ethical problems of experimental research entitled: "Human Use on Human Subjects: The Problem of Deception in Social Psychological Experiments." And Dr. Thomas Crawford, a social psychologist at Berkeley, wrote:

Kelman takes the position that experimental manipulations are legitimate provided that they serve to increase the individual's freedom of choice.... I submit that Milgram's research ... is precisely aimed at achieving the admirable goal which Kelman sets before us. We can hardly read the study without becoming sensitized to analogous conflicts in our own lives.

("In Defense of Obedience Research; An Extension of the Kelman Ethic." In The Social Psychology of Psychological Research, edited by Arthur G. Miller. New York: The Free Press, 1972.)


Dr. Alan Elms of the University of California, Davis, wrote:

Milgram, in exploring the conditions which produce such destructive obedience, and the psychological processes which lead to such attempted abdications of responsibility, seems to me to have done some of the most morally significant research in modern psychology.

(From: Social Psychology and Social Relevance, Little, Brown and Company, 1972.)
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Obedience to Authority, by Stanley Milgram

Postby admin » Thu Oct 17, 2013 10:49 pm

Appendix II: Patterns Among Individuals

To broaden our understanding of why some people obey and others defy the experimenter, a number of individual tests were given to the subjects. To see whether obedient and disobedient subjects differ in their concept of responsibility, subjects in the first four experimental conditions were exposed to a "responsibility clock." This consisted of a disk which the subject could divide into three segments by means of movable rods rotating from the center. The subject, after performing in the experiment, was asked to "cut slices of pie" proportional to the responsibility of the three participants in the experiment (experimenter, subject, and victim). We asked, "How much is each of us responsible for the fact that this person was given electric shocks against his will?" The experimenter read off the results directly on the back of the disk, which is graduated in the manner of a 360-degree protractor.

On the whole, subjects did not have very much difficulty performing the task. And the results for 118 subjects for whom the test was given are shown in Table 9.

Table 9. Assignment of Responsibility by Defiant and Obedient Subjects

Image

The major finding is that the defiant subjects see themselves as principally responsible for the suffering of the learner, assigning 48 percent of the total responsibility to themselves and 39 percent to the experimenter. The balance tips slightly for the obedient subjects, who do not see themselves as any more responsible than the experimenter, and indeed, are willing to accept slightly less of the responsibility. A larger difference occurs in assigning responsibility to the learner. The obedient subjects assign him about twice as large a share of the responsibility for his own suffering as do the defiant subjects. When questioned on this matter, they point to the fact that he volunteered for the experiment and did not learn very efficiently.

Thus, the defiant subjects, more often than obedient subjects, attribute primary responsibility to themselves. And they attribute less responsibility to the learner. Of course, these measures were obtained after the subject's performance, and we do not know if they constitute enduring predispositions of the obedient and defiant subjects, or whether they were post facto adjustments of thought.

Image
Fig. 20. Responsibility clock

Dr. Alan Elms administered a number of psychological tests to about twenty obedient and twenty defiant subjects who had performed in the proximity series. His major finding is that there was a relationship between obedience in the experiment and score on the F scale. This is a scale developed by Adorno and his associates to measure fascistic tendencies (1950), and Elms found that those subjects who had obeyed showed a greater degree of authoritarianism (a higher F score) than those who refused to obey. Offhand, this sounds somewhat tautological but Elms explains:

The relationship between obedience and some elements of authoritarianism seems fairly strong; and it should be remembered that the measure of obedience is a measure of actual submission to authority, not just what a person says he's likely to do. Too much of the research on authoritarianism ... has been on the level of paper-and-pencil responses, which don't necessarily get translated into behavior. But here we have people either obeying or refusing the demands of authority, in a realistic and highly disturbing situation.... So it does look as if those researchers in the late 40's had something, something which can be translated from abstract tendencies into actual authoritarian behavior: submitting to the man in command, punishing the weaker subordinate. (page 133) (A. C. Elms, Social Psychology and Social Relevance, 1972)


The relationship between the measure on the F scale and performance in the experiment, although suggestive, is not very strong, owing in part, I think, to the imperfection of paper-and-pencil measuring devices. It is hard to relate performance to personality because we really do not know very much about how to measure personality.

Still another effort to find correlates of obedience was undertaken by Dr. Lawrence Kohlberg, a colleague of mine at Yale University. Dr. Kohlberg had developed a scale of moral development, which is based on the theory that individuals pass through a number of stages of moral judgment as they mature. Using a group of 34 Yale undergraduates who had served in pilot studies, he found that those who broke off were at a higher level of moral development than those who remained obedient. Again, the findings are suggestive, though not very strong (Kohlberg, 1965).

I had also collected background information on subjects immediately after participation in the experiment. The findings, although generally weak, pointed in the following directions. Republicans and Democrats were not significantly different in obedience levels; Catholics were more obedient than Jews or Protestants. The better educated were more defiant than the less well educated. Those in the moral professions of law, medicine, and teaching showed greater defiance than those in the more technical professions, such as engineering and physical science. The longer one's military service, the more obedience -- except that former officers were less obedient than those who served only as enlisted men, regardless of length of service. These were the findings when subjects in the first four experimental conditions (the proximity series) were studied. Many of these findings "washed out" when further experimental conditions were added in, for reasons that were somewhat mysterious to me. (It is true, of course, that the meaning of obedience and disobedience changes from one condition to the next.) My over-all reaction was to wonder at how few correlates there were of obedience and disobedience and how weakly they are related to the observed behavior. 1 am certain that there is a complex personality basis to obedience and disobedience. But I know we have not found it.

In any event it would be a mistake to believe that any single temperamental quality is associated with disobedience, or to make the simpleminded statement that kindly and good persons disobey while those who are cruel do not. There are simply too many points in the processes at hand at which various components of the personality can play complicated roles to allow any oversimplified generalizations. Moreover, the disposition a person brings to the experiment is probably less important a cause of his behavior than most readers assume. For the social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often, it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Obedience to Authority, by Stanley Milgram

Postby admin » Thu Oct 17, 2013 10:50 pm

Notes

1. Preliminary and regular run. Pretests revealed that the procedure of reading words and administering shocks required some practice before it could be handled smoothly. Therefore, immediately preceding the regular run, the teacher was given a preliminary series of ten words to read to the learner. There were three neutral words in the practice series (i.e., words that the learner answered correctly), so that shocks were administered for seven of the words, with the maximum shock at 105 volts (moderate shock). Almost all subjects mastered the procedure by the time the preliminary run was over.

Subjects are then presented with a second list, and are told that the procedure is the same as for the first list; the experimenter adds, however:

When you get to the bottom of the list, repeat it over again, and continue giving shocks, until the learner has learned all the pairs correctly.

The experimenter instructs the subject to:

Start from 15 volts and increase the shock level one step each time the learner gives a wrong answer.


2. No subject who reached the 30th shock level ever refused to continue using it.

3. David Mark Mantell, "The Potential for Violence in Germany," Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 27, No. 4 (November 4, 1971), pp. 101-12.

4. Within the last decade the effects of physical proximity on behavior have come under critical examination. See, for example, Edward T. Hall, The Hidden Dimension New York: Doubleday, 1966).

5. Recently, I have learned that other experimenters (Sheridan and King, 1972) have replicated the obedience experiments but with this difference: in place of a human victim, they used a genuine victim, a puppy, who actually received the electric shock and who yelped, howled, and ran when he was shocked. Men and women were used as subjects, and the authors found that the women were more compliant than the men. Indeed, they write; "Without exception, females's complied with instructions to shock the puppy all the way to the end of the scale." See also Kilham and Mann, 1972.

6. This is borne out by examining the data on reported nervousness. At the conclusion of his performance, each subject indicated on a scale just how tense or nervous he was at the point of maximum tension. These data are available for twenty-one experimental conditions, including the present one, and obedient women report higher tension than any of the twenty groups of obedient males. This may be due to the fact that the women were more nervous than the men, or simply that they felt freer to report it. In any case, for those women who were obedient, the reported tension exceeded that of any of the twenty other conditions. However, this is not true of the defiant women. Their reports of nervousness fall out just about in the middle of the distribution for male defiant subjects.

7. See study by Hofling et al. on the failure of nurses to question doctors' orders on drug overdoses. Charles K. Hofling, E. Brotzman, S. Dalrymple, N. Graves, C. Pierce, "An Experimental Study in Nurse-Physician Relationships," The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Vol. 143, No. 2 (1966), pp. 171-80.

8. The assertion that the content of the command may itself be largely responsible for the effects is not gratuitous. Numerous studies in social psychology demonstrate the effects that peers, lacking any particular authority, may exercise on an individual (Asch, 1951; Milgram, 1964).

9. Conformity is, as de Tocqueville shrewdly observed, the logical regulatory mechanism of democratized relations among men. It is "democratic" in the sense that the pressure it places on the target is not to make him better or worse than those exerting the pressure but merely to make him the same.

Obedience arises out of and perpetuates inequalities in human relationships and thus, in its ultimate expression, is the ideal regulatory mechanism of fascism. It is only logical that a philosophy of government that has human inequality as its touchstone will also elevate obedience as an absolute virtue. Obedient behavior is initiated in the context of a hierarchical social structure and has as its outcome the differentiation of behavior between superior and subordinate. It is no accident that the hallmark of the Third Reich was its emphasis both on the concept of superior and inferior groups and on quick, impressive, and prideful obedience, with clicking boots and the ready execution of command.

10. I have oversimplified. While it is true that nature is rich in hierarchical organizations, it is not the case that men need function within them at all times. An isolated brain cell cannot survive apart from its larger organ system. But an individual's relative self- sufficiency frees him from total dependence on larger social systems. He has the capacity both to merge into such systems, through the assumption of roles, or to separate himself from them. This capacity for dual functioning confers on the species maximum adaptive advantages. It assures the power, security, and efficiency that derives from organization, along with the innovative potential and flexible response of the individual. From the standpoint of species survival it is the best of both worlds.

11. Students of child development have long recognized that "the first social relationship is one of recognizing and complying with the suggestions of authority" (English, 1961, page 24). The initial conditions of total dependency give the child little choice in the matter. And authority generally presents itself to the infant in a benign and helpful form. Nonetheless, it has been commonly observed that at the age of two or three, the infant enters a period of unrestrained negativism in which he challenges authority at virtually every turn, rejecting even its most benign demands. Stogdill (1936) reports that of all behavior problems of social adjustment, parents rank disobedience as the most serious. Frequently, there is intense conflict between child and parent at this point, and maturational processes, abetted by parental insistence, ordinarily bring the child to a more compliant disposition. The child's interminable disobedience, however much it constitutes a rejection of authority and assertion of self, differs from adult disobedience in that it takes place without any conception of individual responsibility on the child's part. Unlike the forms of disobedience we may come to value in the adult, it is an indiscriminate, purely expressive form of defiance that is not grounded in moral concerns.

12. The technical problem of how authority communicates its legitimacy is worth serious thought. Consider that when a young man receives a letter that claims to be from his draft board, what evidence is there that the entire operation is not simply an extended prank? And if we are to carry this further, what is the evidence that when the boy appears at a camp designated by the board, the men in khaki really have the right to take charge of his life? Perhaps it is all a gigantic hoax perpetrated by a contingent of unemployed actors. Genuine authority, because it recognizes the ease with which the appearance of authority may be fabricated, must he extremely vigilant of counterfeit authority, and the penalties for falsely claiming authority are severe.

13. Imagine an experimenter traveling from one house to the next in a private residential district and, with permission, setting up his experiments in the living rooms of those homes. His aura of authority would be weaker without the laboratory setting that ordinarily buttresses his position.

14. For the concept of "zone of indifference," see Herbert A. Simon, Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organizations. New York: The Free Press, 1965.

15. The Caine Mutiny, by Herman Wouk (1952), illustrates this situation well. It is all right for an authority to be stupid. Many persons of authority function exceedingly well even if they are incompetent. The problem arises only when an authority, taking advantage of his position, forces his more competent subordinates to follow a wrong course of action. Stupid authorities can sometimes be very effective and even beloved by their subordinates, as long as they assign responsibility to the talented subordinates. The Caine Mutiny illustrates two additional points. First, how difficult it is to defy authority even when authority is incompetent. Only after great inner stress and turmoil did Willie and Keith take over the Caine, though it was on its way to being sunk because of Queeg's incompetence. Second, despite what appeared to be virtually absolute requirement that the mutiny occur, the attachment to principles of authority was so profound, that the author, through the voice of Greenwald, in a dramatic turn of events, called into question the moral basis of the mutiny.

16. In Group Psychology and Analysis of the Ego (1921), Freud pointed out that a person suppresses his own superego functions, allowing the leader full right to decide what is good or bad.

17. Koestler notes in his brilliant analysis of social hierarchies: "I have repeatedly stressed that the selfish impulses of man constitute a much lesser historic danger than his integrative tendencies. To put it in the simplest way: the individual who indulges in an excess of aggressive self-assertiveness incurs the penalties of society -- he outlaws himself, he contracts out of the hierarchy. The true believer, on the other hand, becomes more closely knit into it; he enters the womb of his church, or party, or whatever the social holon to which he surrenders his identity." Arthur Koestler, The Ghost in the Machine (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1967), Part III, "Disorder," p. 246.

18. An interpretation consistent with the theory of cognitive dissonance. See L. Festinger, 1957.

19. See Erving Goffman, "Embarrassment and Social Organization," The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 62 (November 1956), pp. 264-71. See also Andre Modigliani, "Embarrassment and Embarrassability," Sociometry, Vol. 31, No. 3 (September 1968), pp. 313-26; and "Embarrassment, Facework, and Eye Contact: Testing a Theory of Embarrassment," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 17, No. 1 (1971), pp. 15-24.

20. If embarrassment and shame are important forces holding the subject to his obedient role, we ought to find a sharp drop in obedience when the preconditions for the experience of these emotions are eliminated. This is precisely what occurred in Experiment 7, when the experimenter departed from the laboratory and gave his orders by telephone. Much of the obedience shown by our subjects was rooted in the face-to-face nature of the social occasion. Some types of obedience -- say, that of a soldier sent on a solitary mission behind enemy lines -- require extended exposure to the authority in question and a congruence between the values of the subordinate and his authority.

Both the studies of Garfinkel and the present experiment indicated that the assumptive structure of social life needed to be disrupted if disobedience was to occur. The same awkwardness, embarrassment, and difficulty in being disobedient occurs as in Garfinkel's (1964) demonstrations, in which people are asked to violate suppositions of everyday life.

21. It is the failure to grasp the transformation into a state of agency and an inadequate understanding of the forces that bind the person into it that account for the almost total inability to predict the behavior in question. Those judging the situation think it is the ordinary person, with his full moral capacities operating, when they predict his break off from the experiment. They do not take into account in the least the fundamental reorganization of a person's mental life that occurs by virtue of entry into an authority system.

The quickest way to correct the erroneous prediction of persons who do not know the outcome of the experiment is to say to them, "The content of the action is not half so important as you think; the relationship among the actors is twice as important. Base your prediction not on what the participants say or do, but on how they relate to each other in terms of a social structure."

There is a further reason why people do not correctly predict the behavior. Society promotes the ideology that an individual's actions stem from his character. This ideology has the pragmatic effect of stimulating people to act as if they alone controlled their behavior. This is, however, a seriously distorted view of the determinants of human action, and does not allow for accurate prediction.

22. Konrad Lorenz describes the disturbance in inhibitory mechanisms brought about by the interposition of tools and weapons: "The same principle applies, to even a greater degree, to the use of modern remote-control weapons. The man who presses the releasing button is so completely screened against seeing. hearing, or otherwise emotionally realizing the consequences of his action that he can commit it with impunity -- even if he is burdened with the power of imagination." Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1966), p. 234.

23. See N. J. Lerner, "Observer's Evaluation of a Victim; Justice, Guilt, and Veridical Perception," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1971), pp. 127-35.

24. In Princeton: D. Rosenhan, Obedience and Rebellion; Observations on the Milgram Three-Party Paradigm. In preparation.

In Munich: D.M. Mantell, "The Potential for Violence in Germany." Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 27, No.4 (1971), pp. 101-12.

In Rome: Leonardo Ancona and Rosetta Pareyson, "Contributo allo studie della aggressione; La Dinamica della obbedienza distruttiva," Archiva di psicologia neurologia e psichiatria, Anna XXIX (1968), fasc. IV.

In Australia: W. Kilham and L. Mann, "Level of Destructive Obedience as a Function of Transmittal' and Executant Roles in the Milgram Obedience Paradigm." In press (1973) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

25. See M. I. Orne and C. C. Holland, for example, and my response to them in: A. G. Miller (ed.) The Social Psychology of Psychological Research. New York; The Free Press, 1972.

26. But we must not be naive on this point. We have all seen how government, with its control of the propaganda apparatus, invariably portrays its goals in morally favorable terms; how, in our own country, the destruction of men, women, and children in Vietnam was justified by reference to saving the Free World, etc. We see, also, how easily the pronouncements are accepted as legitimizing goals. Dictatorships attempt to persuade the masses by justifying their programs in terms of established values. Even Hitler did not say that he would destroy the Jews because of hatred but because of his wish to purify the Aryan race and create a higher civilization free of enfeebling vermin.

27. Bierstedt points out quite correctly that the phenomenon of authority is more fundamental even than that of government: "... The problem of authority rests at the very bottom of an adequate theory of the social structure ... even government, in a sense, is not merely a political phenomenon but primarily and fundamentally a social phenomenon, and ... the matrix from which government springs itself possesses an order and a structure. If anarchy is the contrary of government, so anomy is the contrary of society. Authority, in other words, is by no means a purely political phenomenon in the narrow sense of the word. For it is not only in the political organization of society, but in all of its organization, that authority appears. Each association in society, no matter how small or how temporary it might be, has its own structure of authority." Bierstedt, pp. 68-69.

28. But the plea of "superior orders" was made by Lieutenant William Calley, who commanded the platoon that carried out the action.

The military prosecutor challenged Calley's plea of superior orders. Instructively, the prosecutor did not contest the principle that a soldier must obey orders, but charged that Calley acted without orders, and therefore, was responsible for the massacre. Calley was adjudged guilty.

The reaction of the American public to the Calley trial was studied by Kelman and Lawrence (1972), and their findings are not reassuring. Fifty-one percent of the sample indicated that they would follow orders if commanded to shoot all inhabitants of a Vietnamese village. Kelman concludes:

"Clearly, not everyone finds the demands of apparently legitimate authorities equally compelling. Not all of Milgram's subjects shocked their victims with the highest voltage. Nor did every soldier under Calley's command follow his orders to kill unarmed civilians. Those who resist in such circumstances have apparently managed to retain the framework of personal causation and responsibility that we ordinarily use in daily life.

"Yet, our data suggest that many Americans feel they have no right to resist authoritative demands. They regard Calley's actions at My Lai as normal, even desirable, because (they think) he performed them in obedience to legitimate authority."


We need to ask why Kelman's respondents see themselves as complying with military authority at My Lai (when few-if any- would have predicted submission to the experimenter's authority).

First, the interview response, secured while the country was at war in Vietnam, reflected attitudes toward the war itself and indicated general support for the government's policies. If the questions had been asked in peacetime, a larger proportion would have predicted disobedience. The response also expressed solidarity with an American soldier who most Americans felt should not have been brought to trial. Second, raising the question of obedience in a military context places it in the setting that is most familiar to the average person: he knows that a soldier is supposed to obey orders, and his interview response springs from folk wisdom, hearsay, and knowledge of the military context. Yet, this does not presume any understanding of general principles of obedience, which can only be demonstrated by their correct application to a novel context. People understand that soldiers massacre, but they fail to see that an action such as this, routinely carried out, is the logical outcome of processes that are at work in less visible form throughout organized society. Finally, the response indicates the degree to which the American people had embraced the viewpoint of authority in evaluating the Vietnam War. They had been thoroughly indoctrinated by government propaganda (which, at the societal level, is the means whereby an official definition of the situation is promulgated). In this sense, the respondents to Kelman's question did not reside completely outside the authority system they were asked to comment upon but had already been influenced by it.

29. Henry Wirz, Trial of Henry Wirz (Commandant at Andersonville), House of Representatives, 40th Congress, 2d Session, Ed. Doc. No. 23. (Letter from the Secretary of War Ad Interim, in answer to a resolution of the House of April 16, 1866, transmitting a summary of the trial of Henry Wirz. Dec. 17, 1867 (ordered to be printed).

30. It would seem that the anarchist argument for universal dismantling of political institutions is a powerful solution to the problem of authority. But the problems of anarchism are equally insoluble. First, while the existence of authority sometimes leads to the commission of ruthless and immoral acts, the absence of authority renders one a victim to such acts on the part of others who are better organized. Were the United States to abandon all forms of political authority, the outcome would be entirely clear. We would soon become the victims of our own disorganization, because better organized societies would immediately perceive and act on the opportunities that weakness creates.

Moreover, it would be an oversimplification to present the picture of the noble individual in a continuous struggle against malevolent authority. The obvious truth is that much of his nobility, the very values he brings to bear against malevolent authority, are themselves derived from authority. And for every individual who carries out harsh action because of authority, there is another individual who is restrained from doing so.

31. See Jay Katz, Experimentation With Human Beings: The Authority of the Investigator, Subject, Professions, and State in the Human Experimentation Process, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1972). This source book of 1159 pages contains commentaries on the present experiments by Baumrind, Elms, Kelman, Ring, and Milgram. It also includes the statement of Dr. Faul Errera, who interviewed a number of participants in the experiment (page 400). Thoughtful discussions of the ethical issues of this research can be found in A. Miller, The Social Psychology of Psychological Research, and in A. Elms, Social Psychology and Social Relevance.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Obedience to Authority, by Stanley Milgram

Postby admin » Thu Oct 17, 2013 10:51 pm

References

Abse, D. The Dogs of Pavlov. London: Valentine, Mitchell & Co., Ltd., in press.

Adorno, T.; Frenkel-Brunswik, Else; Levinson, D. J., and Sanford, R. N. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper & Row, 1950.

Arendt, H, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press, 1963.

Asch, J. E. "Effects of Group Pressure upon the Modification and Distortion of Judgement." In H. Guetzkow (ed.), Groups, Leadership, and Men. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Press, 1951.

Ashby, W. R. An Introduction to Cybernetics. London: Chapman and Hall Ltd., 1956.

Baumrind, D. "Some Thoughts on Ethics of Research: After Reading Milgram's 'Behavioral Study of Obedience.''' American Psychologist, Vol. 19 (1964), pp. 421-23.

Berkowitz, L. Aggression: A Social Psychological Analysis. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962.

Bettelheim, B. The Informed Heart. New York: The Free Press, 1960.

Bierstedt, R. "The Problem of Authority." Chapter 3 in Freedom and Control in Modern Society. New York: Van Nostrand, 1954, pp. 67-81.

Block, J. and J. "An Interpersonal Experiment on Reactions to Authority." Human Relations, Vol. 5 (1952), pp. 91-98.

Buss, A. H. The Psychology of Aggression. New York: John Wiley, 1961.

Cannon, W. B. The Wisdom of the Body. New York: W. W. Norton, 1932.

Cartwright, D. (ed.). Studies in Social Power. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959.

Comfort, A. Authority and Delinquency in the Modern State: A Criminological Approach to the Problem of Poeer. London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1950.

Crawford, T. "In Defense of Obedience Research: An Extension of the Kelman Ethic." In A. G. Miller (ed.), The Social Psychology of Psychological Research. New York The Free Press, 1972, pp. 179-86.

Dicks, H. V. Licensed Mass Murder: A Social Psychological Study of Some S.S. Killers. New York Basic Books, 1972.

Elms, A. C. "Acts of Submission." Chapter 4 of Social Psychology and Social Relevance. Boston: Little, Brown, 1972.

English, H. B. Dynamics of Child Development. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961.

Erikson, M. "The Inhumanity of Ordinary People." International Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 6 (1968), pp. 278-79.

Etzioni, A. "A Model of Significant Research." International Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 6 (1968), pp. 279-80.

Feinberg, I. "Sex Differences in Resistance to Group Pressure." Unpublished master's thesis, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pa.

Festinger, L. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. New York: Harper & Row. 1957.

Frank, J. D. "Experimental Studies of Personal Pressure and Resistance." Journal of Genetic Psychology, Vol. 30 (1944), pp. 23-64.

French, J. R. P. "A Formal Theory of Social Power: Psychological Review, Vol. 63 (1956), pp. 181-94.

___, Morrison, H. W., and Levinger, G. "Coercive Power and Forces Affecting Conformity." Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, Vol. 61 (1960), pp. 93-101.

___, and Raven, B. H. "The Bases of Social Power." In D. Cartwright (ed.), Studies in Social Power. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959, pp. 150-67.

Freud, S. Totem and Taboo. Translated by J. Strachey. New York: W. W. Norton, 1950.

___, "Thoughts for the Times on War and Death." In J. Strachey (ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 14. London, The Hogarth Press, 1957, pp. 273-302.

___, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Translated by J. Strachey. London: Hogarth, 1922; New York: Bantam Books, 1960. (German original, 1921.)

Fromm, E. Escape from Freedom. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1941.

Garfinkel, H. "Studies of the Routine Grounds of Everyday Activities." Social Problems, Vol. 11 (Winter 1964), pp. 225-50.

Glasser, R. J. 365 Days. New York: George Braziller, 1971.

Goffman, E. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959.

___, "Embarrassment and Social Organization." the American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 62 (November 1956), pp. 264-71.

Halberstam, David. Making of a Quagmire. New York: Random House, 1965.

Hall, E. T. The Hidden Dimension. New York: Doubleday, 1966.

Hillberg, R. The Destruction of the European Jews. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961.

Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1909, Reproduction of 1651 edition.

Hofling, C. K.; Brotzman, E.; Dalrymple, S.; Graves, N., and Pierce, C. "An Experimental Study of Nurse-Physician Relations." The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. Vol. 143, No. 2 (1966), pp. 171-80.

Homans. G. C. Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1961.

Katz, J. Experimentation with Human Beings: The Authority of the In vestigator, Subject, Professions, and State in the Human Experimentation Process. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1972.

Kelman, H. "Human Use of Human Subjects: The Problem of Deception in Social Psychological Experiments." Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 67 (1967), pp. 1-11.

___, and Lawrence, L. "Assignment of Responsibility in the Case of Lt. Calley: Preliminary Report on a National Survey." Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 28, No. 1 (1972).

Kierkegaard, S. Fear and Trembling. English edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941.

Kilham, W., and Mann, L. "Level of Destructive Obedience as a Function of Transmittor and Executant Roles in the Milgram Obedience Paradigm." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, in press.

Koestler, Arthur. The Ghost in the Machine. New York: Macmillan, 1967.

Kohlberg, L. "Development of Moral Character and Moral Ideology." In Hoffman, M. L., and Hoffman, L. W. (eds.), Review of Child Development Research, Vol. 1. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1964, pp. 383-431.

___, "Relationships Between the Development of Moral Judgment and Moral Conduct." Paper presented at Symposium on Behavioral and Cognitive Concepts in the Study of Internationalization at the Society for Research in Child Development, Minneapolis, Minnesota, March 26, 1956.

Laski, H. J. '''The Dangers of Obedience." Harper's Monthly Magazine, Vol. 159 (1919), pp. 1-10.

Lazarus, R. "A Laboratory Approach to the Dynamics of Psychological Stress." American Psychologist, Vol. 19 (1964), pp. 400-411.

Leavitt, S. "The Andersonville Trial." In Bennett Cerf (ed.), Four Contemporary American Plays. New York: Random House. 1961.

Lerner, M. J. "Observer's Evaluation of a Victim: Justice, Guilt, and Veridical Perception." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol. 20, No. 2 (1971), pp. 127-35.

Lewin, K. Field Theory in Social Science. New York: Harper & Row, 1951.

Lippett, R. "Field Theory and Experiment in Social Psychology: Autocratic and Democratic Group Atmosphere." American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 45, pp. 25-49.

Lorenz, K. On Aggression. Translated by M. K. Wilson. New York: Bantam Books, 1963.

Mantell, D. M. "The Potential for Violence in Germany." Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 27, No. 4 (1971), pp. 101-12.

Marler, P., Mechanisms of Animal Behavior. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1967.

Milgram, S. "Behavioral Study of Obedience." Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 67 (1963), pp. 371-78.

___, "Dynamics of Obedience: Experiments in Social Psychology." Mimeographed report, National Science Foundation, Jan. 25, 1961.

___, "Group Pressure and Action Against a Person." Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, Vol. 69 (1964), pp. 137-43.

___, "Issues in the Study of Obedience: A Reply to Baumrind." American Psychologist, Vol. 19 (1964), pp. 848-52.

___, "Liberating Effects of Group Pressure." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 1 (1965), pp. 127-34.

___, Obedience (a filmed experiment). Distributed by the New York University Film Library. Copyright 1965.

___, "Some Conditions of Obedience and Disobedience to Authority." Human Relations, Vol. 18, No. 1 (1965), pp. 57-76.

___, "Interpreting Obedience: Error and Evidence; A Reply to Orne and Holland." In A. G. Miller (ed.), The Social Psychology of Psychological Research. New York: The Free Press, 1972.

Miller, A. (ed.). The Social Psychology of Psychological Research. New York: The Free Press, 1972.

Miller, N. "Experimental Studies of Conflict." In M. J. Hunt (ed.), Personality and Behavior Disorders. New York: Ronald Press, 1944, pp. 431-65.

Modigliani, A. "Embarrassment and Embarrassability." Sociometry, Vol. 31, No. 3 (September 1968). pp. 313-26.

___, "Embarrassment, Facework, and Eye Contact: Testing a Theory of Embarrassment." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 17, No. 1 (1971), pp.15-24.

Orne, M. T., and Holland, C. C. "On the Ecological Validity of Laboratory Deceptions." International Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 6, No. 4 (1968), pp. 282-93.

Orwell, G. Selected Essays. London: Penguin Books, 1957.

Raven, B. H. "Social Influence and Power." In I.D. Steiner and M. Fishbein (eds.), Current Studies in Social Psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965.

___, and French, J. R. P. "Group Support, Legitimate Power, and Social Influence." Journal of Personality, Vol. 26 (1958), pp. 400-409.

Rescher, N. The Logic of Commands. New York: Dover Publications, 1966.

Rosenhan, D. "Some Origins of Concerns for Others." In P. H. Mussen, J. Langer, and M. Covington (eds.), Trends and Issues in Developmental Psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969, pp. 134-53.

___, Obedience and Rebellion: Observations on the Milgram Three-Party Paradigm. In preparation.

Rosenthal, R., and Rosnow, R. L. "Volunteer Subjects and the Results of Opinion Change Studies." Psychological Reports, Vol. 19 (1966), p. 1183.

Scott, J. P. Aggression. Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 1958.

Sheridan, C.L., and King, R. G. "Obedience to Authority with an Authentic Victim." Proceedings, Eightieth Annual Convention, American Psychological Association. 1972, pp. 165-66.

Sherif, M. The Psychology of Social Norms. New York: Harper & Row, 1936.

Shirer, W. L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960.

Sidis, B., The Psychology of Suggestion. New York: Appleton, 1898.

Simon, H. A. Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organizations. New York: The Free Press, 1965.

Snow, C. P. "Either-Or" Progressive, February 1961, p. 24.

Sophocles. Antigone. Translated by J. J. Chapman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1930.

Stogdill, R. M. "The Measurement of Attitudes Toward Parental Control and the Social Adjustment of Children." Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 20 (1936), 259-67.

Taylor, T. Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970.

Tinbergen, N. Social Behavior in Animals. London: Butler and Tanner, Ltd., 1953.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden and Civil Disobedience. Edited by Sherman Paul. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957.

Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. London: Oxford University Press, 1965.

Tolstoy, L. Tolstoy's Writings on Civil Disobedience and Non-violence. New York: New American Library, 1968.

Weber, M. Theory of Social and Economic Organization, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947.

Wouk, H. The Caine Mutiny. Garden City: Doubleday and Company, 1952.

Other Works Consulted

Adams, J. Stacy, and Romney, A. Kimball "A Functional Analysis of Authority." Pychological Review, Vol. 66, No. 4 (July 1959), pp. 234-51.

Aronfreed, Justin. Conduct and Conscience: The Socialization of Internalized Control over Behavior. New York: Academic Press, 1968.

Berkowitz, Leonard, and Lundy, R. "Personality Characteristics Related to Susceptibility to Influence by Peers or Authority Figures." Journal of Personality, Vol. 25 (1957), pp. 306-16.

Binet, A. La Suggestibilite. Paris: Schleicher, 1900.

Cohn, Norman. Warrant for Genocide. New York: Harper & Row, 1967.

DeGrazia, Sebastian. "What Authority Is Not." The American Political Science Review, Vol. 3 (June 1959).

Eatherly, Claude. Burning Conscience: The Case of the Hiroshima Pilot Told in His Letters to Gunther Anders. New York: Monthy Review Press, 1961.

Elkins, Stanley M. Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1959.

Friedlander, Saul. Kurt Gerstein: The Ambiguity of Good. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969.

Friedrich, C. J. Authority. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958.

Gamson, William, Power and Discontent. Homewood, Ill: The Dorsey Press, 1968.

Gaylin, W. In the Service of Their Country: War Resisters in Prison. New York: The Viking Press, 1970.

Goldhammer, R., and Shils, E. "Types of Power and Status." American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 45 (1939), pp. 171-78.

Gurr, Ted Robert. Why Men Rebel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970.

Hallie, Philip P. The Paradox of Cruelty. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969.

Hammer, Richard. The Court Martial of Lt. Calley. New York: Coward, McCann, & Geoghegan, 1971.

Heydecker, J. J., and Leeb, J. The Nuremberg Trial. Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company, 1962.

Howton, F. William. Functionaries. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1969.

Huntington, Samuel P. The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations. New York: Vintage Books, 1964.

Lasswell, H. D., and Kaplan, A. Power and Society. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1950.

Lauman, Edward O.; Siegel, Paul M., and Hodge, Robert W. (eds.). The Logic of Social Hierarchies. Chicago: Markham Publishing Co., 1970.

Neuman, Franz. The Democratic and the Authoritarian State: Essays in Political and Legal Theory. Edited by Herbert Marcuse. New York: The Free Press, 1957.

Parsons, T. The Social System. New York: The Free Press, 1951.

Reich, Wilhelm. The Mass Psychology of Fascism. New York: Orgone Institute Press, 1946.

Ring, K., Wallston, K., and Corey, M. "Mode of Debriefing as a Factor Affecting Subjective Reaction to a Milgram-Type Obedience Experiment: An Ethical Inquiry." Representative Research in Social Psychology, Vol. 1 (970), pp. 67-88.

Rokeach, M. "Authority, Authoritarianism, and Conformity." In I. A. Berg and B. M. Bass (eds.), Conformity and Deviation. New York: Harper & Row, 1961, pp. 230-57.

Russell, Bertrand. Authority and the Individual. Boston: Beacon Press, 1949.

Sack, John. Lt. Calley: His Own Story. New York: The Viking Press, 1970.

Speer, Albert. Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs. New York: Macmillan, 1970.

Tilker, H. A. "Socially Responsible Behavior as a Function of Observer Responsibility and Victim Feedback," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 14, No. 2 (February 1970), pp. 95-100.

Von Mises, Ludwig. Bureaucracy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1944.

Whyte, L. L., Wilson, A. C., and Wilson, D. (eds.), Hierarchical Structures. New York: American Elsevier Publishing, 1969.

Wolfe, D. M. "Power and Authority in the Family," In D. Cartwright (ed.), Studies in Social Power. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959, pp. 99-117.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Obedience to Authority, by Stanley Milgram

Postby admin » Thu Oct 17, 2013 10:51 pm

Index

Abse, Dannie, 198
Action, in obedience experiment, 89,
90, 149
Administrative Behavior (Simon), 208
Adorno, T., 204
Agentic state, 132-134, 135, 138, 140.
142, 143-148, 155; binding factors
in, 7, 148--152; and commands, 147148;
and "definition of situation, "
145; responsibility lost in, 145-147;
self-image in, 147; and tuning proc
ess, 144; see also Authority; Disobedience;
Hierarchy; Obedience;
Obedience experiment
Aggression, 165-168
Allport, Cordon W., 178
American Journal of Sociology, 209
American Psychologist. 193
Anarchism, 212
Ancona, Leonardo, 210
Antigone (Sophocles), 2
Anxiety, and disobedience, 152
Arendt, Hannah, 5, 6
Asch, S. E., 114, 115, 207
Ashby, W. R., 125; quoted, 127
Attica Penitentiary, 113
Authoritarian state, 179
Authority, 144, 155, 175, 179, 208, 211;
closeness of, 61; coordination of
command with function of, 141-142;
double, see Two Authorities; entry
into system of, 140-141; perception
of, 138-140; see also Agentic state;
Disobedience; Hierarchy; Obedience;
Obedience experiment
Authority as Victim (Experiment 14),
94-95 (table), 99-104, 110
Automata, 126-127, 128, 129, 131, 132;
see also Cybernetics
Autonomy, vs. agentic state, 133
Avoidance, 158

Batta, Bruno, 45-47
Baumrind, Diana, 193, 209, 212
Berkowitz, L., 167
Bettelheim, B., 158
Bierstedt, R., 211
Binding factors, 148
Brandt, Gretchen, 84-85
Braverman, Morris, 52-54
Breakoff points, in obedience experiment,
28, 29 (table), , 32, 40, 57,
60, 61 (table)
Bridgeport, obedience experiment at,
68, 69, 70, 171 (table)
Brotzman, E., 207
Buffers. 156-157, 183
Bureaucracy, destructive, 121, 122
Buss, A. H., 167

Caine Mutiny, The (Wouk), 208-209
Calley, William, 184, 211
Cannon, W. B., 126
Change of Personnel (Experiment 6),
58--59, 60-61 (table), 171 (table)
Closeness of Authority, see Experiment
7
Cognitive field, denial and narrowing
of, 38
Commands, 146
Conformity: distinguished from obedi
ence, 113-115, 207; as imitation,
114; and voluntarism, 115
Conscience (superego), 127, 128, 129,
132, 146, 165, 209
Control condition, see Experiment 11
Control panel, diagram of, 28
Conversion, 161
Counteranthropomorphism, 8
Crawford, Thomas, quoted, 201
Cybernetics, 125-128, 131, 133; see
also Automata

Dalrymple, S., 207
"Dangers of Obedience, The" (Laski),
189
Debriefing, 24, 191
Delacroix, Eugene, 113
Democracy, 179, 204
Denial, 158, 173-174
Dicks, H. V., 177; quoted, 177-178
Disobedience, 14, 208; and anxiety,
152; in children, 205; strain ended
by, 157, 162-164; see also Agentic
state; Authority; Hierarchy; Obedience;
Obedience experiment
Dissent, 161
Dogs of Pavlov, The (Abse), 198
Dontz, Karen, 77-79
Double authority, see Two Authorities
Dr. Strangelove (film), 7

Ego ideal, 147; group ideal substituted
for, 131
Eichmann, 5, 6, 11, 54, 178, 186
Eichmann in Jerusalem (Arendt), 5
Elms, Alan, 204, 213; quoted, 203-204
Embarrassment. and obedience, 151,
187, 209
Empathic cues, in obedience experi
ment, 36, 38
English, H. B., 208
Erikson, Milton, quoted, 201
Errera, Paul, 212
Ethics in research, problems of,
193-202
Etiquette, 149, 152
Etzioni, Amitai, quoted, 201
Experiment, obedience, see Obedience
experiment
Experiment 1 (Remote-Feedback), 32,
35 I table), 36, 38, 39, 171 (table)
Experiment 2 (Voice-Feedback), 2223, 34, 35
(table), 36, 57, 173;
Braverman's behavior in, 52-54;
psychiatrists' predictions of behavior
in, 27, 30, 31; Rensaleers behavior
in, 50--52; and subjects' estimates of
pain felt by victim, 171, 171 (table);
Washington's behavior in, 49-50
Experiment 3 (Proximity), 34, 35
(table), 36, 38, 39; subject's
behavior in, 47-49; and subjects'
estimates of pain felt by victim, 171
(table I
Experiment 4 (Touch-Proximity), 34,
35 (table 1, 36, 39, 188; Batta's
behavior in, 45-47; and subjects'
estimates of pain felt by victim,
171 (table)
Experiment 5 (New Base-Line Con
dition), 55-57, 59, 80-61 (table),
Prozi's behavior in, 73-77; and
subjects' estimates of pain felt by
victim, 171 (table)
Experiment 6 (Change of Personnel),
58-59, 60-61 (table), 171 (table)
Experiment 7 (Closeness of Authority),
59-62, 60-61 (table), 159, 209;
Gino's behavior in, 86-88; and subjects'
estimates of pain felt by
victim, 171 (table)
Experiment 8 (Women as Subjects),
60-61 in (table), 62-63; Brandt's
behavior in, 84-85; Dontz's behavior
in, 77-79; Rosenblum's behavior in,
79-84; and subjects' estimates of
pain felt by victim, 171 (table)
Experiment 9 (Victim's Limited
Contract), 60-61 (table), 63-66;
subject's behavior in, 65--66
Experiment 10 (Institutional Context),
60-61 (table), 66-70
Experiment 11 (Subject Free to Choose
Shock Level), 60-61 (table), 70-72,
166
Experiment 12 (Learner Demands to
Be Shocked), 90-92, 94-95 (table)
Experiment 13 (Ordinary Man Gives
Orders), 93, 94-95 (table), 96-97
Experiment 13a (Subject as Bystander),
94-95 (table), 97-99
Experiment 14 (Authority as Victim),
94-95 (table), 99-104, 110
Experiment 15 (Two Authorities: Contradictory
Commands), 94-95
(table), 105-107, 110, 111
Experiment 16 (Two Authorities: One
as Victim), 94-95 (table), 107-110,
111
Experiment 17 (Two Peers Rebel),
116-121; behavior of confederates
in, 117-119; and reactions of naive
subject to defiant peers, 118, 120121;
shocks administered in, 119;
technique for, 116-118, 120-121
Experiment 18 (Peer Administers
Shock), 119 (table), 121-122
Experimentation with Human Beings
(Katz), 211
Explicitness, in obedience, 114-115

F-scale, 201
Family, as antecedent of obedience,
135-136
Fascism, 204
Feinberg, I., 63
Festinger, L., 208
Freud. Sigmund, 113, 131, 208

Gandhi, Mahatma, 113
Garfinkel, H., 208
Generalizing from the experiment, 174178
Ghost in the Machine, The (Koestler),
208
Gino, Pasqual, 86-88
Glasser, R. J., 180
Goffman, Erving, 150, 209
Graves, N., 207
Greece, ancient, 124
Group effects, 113-122
Group formation, 39
Group ideal, substituted for ego ideal,
131
Group Psychology (Freud), 131, 209

Halberstam, David, 180
Hall, Edward T., 206
"Heart problem, " in obedience experiment,
55, 56, 57
Hidden Dimension, The (Hall), 206
Hierarchy: and obedience, 114, 123125,
128-130, 131; survival value
of, 123-125; see also Agentic state;
Authority; Disobedience; Obedience
experiment
Hilberg, R., 187
Hitler, Adolf, 130, 155, 176, 211; see
also Nazism
Hobbes, Thomas, 2
Hofling, Charles K., 207
Holland, C. C., 210
Romans, G. C., 121
Homeostatic model, 126
Hoodlums, predatory, groups of, 121

Imitation, conformity as, 114
Indifference, zone of. 208
Individuals, patterns among, 201-203;
individuals confront authority, 44-54, 73-
88
Informed Heart, The (Bettelheim), 158
Inhibition, passive, 40
Institutional Context (Experiment 10).
60-61 (table), 66-70
Interaction Laboratory, of Yale University,
16, 55
Internalization of social order, 138
International Journal of Psychiatry,
201

Jews, and Nazism, 2, 9, 158, 187, 211
Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease,
207
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
209, 210
Journal of Social Issues, 206, 210

Katz, Jay, 212
Kelman, Herbert, 201, 202, 212; quoted,
211
Kilham, W., 207, 210
King, R. G., ·206
Koestler, Arthur, 209
Kohlberg, Lawrence, 205

Language, modification of, 187
Laski, Harold J., quoted, lS9
Laughter, 52-54
Lawrence, L., 211
Lazarus, R., 193
Learner Demands to Be Shocked
(Experiment 12), 90-92, 94-95
(table )
Legitimacy of authority, how communicated,
205
Lerner, N. J., 210
Lorenz, Konrad, 210
Lynch mob, 121

Mann, L., 207, 210
Mantell, D. M., 171, 206, 210
Marler, P., 123
Methods, general principles, 13f.;
problems of, 169-178
Miller, Arthur C., 202, 212
Miller, N., 42
Modigliani, Andre, 209
Moral judgment, 6, 153, 155
My Lai massacre, 176, 183, 186, 211

Nazism, 2, 9, 52, 85, 158, 175, 176,
177, 178, 179187; see also Hitler,
Adolf
New Base-Line Condition, see Experiment
5
Nuremberg trials, 8, 176

Obedience, 14; and agentic state, see
Agentic state; analysis of, 123-134;
antecedent conditions of, 135-143;
and anxiety, 152; and authority,
perception of, 138-140; binding
factors in, 7, 148-152; conformity
distinguished from, 113-115, 207;
and cybernetic viewpoint, 125-128,
131, 133; and embarrassment, 209;
explicitness in, 114-115; family as
antecedent of, 135-136; and
hierarchy, 114, 123-125, 128-130,
131; ideological justification for, 142;
institutional setting for, 137; and
perception of authority, 138-140;
process of, 135-152; and reward
structure, 137-138; and strain, see
Strain; and variability, 130-132;
and Vietnam War, 180-186, 211, 212;
and voluntarism, 115; see also
Authority; Disobedience; Obedience
experiment
Obedience experiment: and acquired
behavior dispositions, 40; action as
element of, 89, 90, 149; and behav
ior dispositions, acquired, 40; breakoff
points in, 28, 29 (table), 32, 40,
57, 60-61 (table); at Bridgeport,
68, 69, 70, 171 (table); criticisms
of, 169-170, 193 If., 196 ff.; empathic
cues in, 36, 38; and experienced
unity of act, 39; experimenter's
role in, 16, 21; feedback from ex
perimenter in, 21; feedback from
victim in, 22-23; in Germany, 171,
207; and group-formation, incipient,
39-40; "heart problem" in, 55, 56,
57; and incipient group-formation,
39-40; and Interaction Laboratory,
16; learning task in, 19-20, 22;
measures in, for subject, 23-24;
method of inquiry in, 13-26; obedience
analysis applied to, 135-152;
participants obtained for, 14-16,
170; position as element of, 89, 90;
procedure in, 17-19; and psychiatrists'
predictions, 27, 30, 31;
reciprocal fields in, 38-39; sample
shock in, 20; and sequential nature
of action, 149; shock generator
used in, 20, 23, 27, 151, 159; shock
instructions in, 20-21; and situational
obligations, 149-152; special prods
in, 21-22; status as element of, 89,
90; and strain, see Strain; subject's
role in, 17-19, 23-24; tension of
subject in, 41-43; unexpected
behavior in, 40-43; victim's role
in, see Victim in obedience experiment;
see also Agentic state;
Authority; Disobedience; Experiments
1-18; Hierarchy; Obedience
On Aggression (Lorenz), 210
Ordinary Man Gives Orders (Experiment
13), 93, 94-95 (table), 96-97
Orne, M. I., 210
Orwell, George, 11; quoted, 11-12

Pain, subjects' estimate of, 171
Parevson, Rosetta, 210
Passive inhibition, 40
Patterns among individuals, 202-204
Peer Administers Shock (Experiment
18), 119 (table), 121-122
Permutations of roles, 89-112, 167
Pierce, c., 207
Plato, 2
Position, in obedience experiment, 89,
90
Predictions of behavior, 27-31, 207
Proximity, see Experiments 1-4
Prozi, Fred, 73-77
Psychiatrists' predictions, of behavior
in Voice-Feedback Experiment, 21,
30, 31

Reciprocal fields, in obedience experiment,
38-39
Remote-Feedback (Experiment 1), 32,
35 (table), 36, 38, 39, 17l (table)
Rensaleer, Jan, 50-52
Responsibility, 46, 50, 51, 76, 77, 85,
87, 134, 163, 187; loss of, 7-8, 145147
Responsibility clock, 203
Reward structure, and obedience, 137138
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
(Shirer), 2
Role permutations, 89-112, 167
Roles, 153
Rosenblum, Elinor, 79-84
Rosenhan, David, 172, 173, 210
Rosenthal, R., 170
Rosnow, R. L., 170

Scott, J. P., 40
Sequential nature of action, 149
Sheridan, C. L., 206
Shirer, William, 2
Shock generator, in obedience experiment,
20, 23, 27, 151, 159
Shock levels; in Experiments 1-4, 35
(table); in Experiments 5-11, 60-61
(table); in Experiments 12-16,
94-95 (table); in Experiments
17-18, 119 (table)
Simon, Herbert A., 208
Situational obligations, 149-152
Snow, C. P., l; quoted, 2
Social order, internalization of, 138
Social Psychology and Social Relevance
(Elm, ), 202, 204, 212
Social Psychology of Psychological
Research (Miller. ed.), 202, 210, 212
Sociometry, 209
Stalin, Joseph, 155
Status, in obedience experiment, 89, 90
Stogdill R. M., 208
Strain, 153-164; and avoidance, 158;
buffers of, 156-157; and denial,
158-159; disobedience as means of
ending, 157, 162-164; and dissent,
161-162: physical expressions of,
161; resolution of, 157-161; sources
of, 155-156; and subterfuges, 159-160
Subject as Bystander (Experiment
13.), 94-95 (table), 97-99
Subject Free to Choose Shock Level
(Experiment 11), 60--61 (table),
70-72, 166
Subjects: how recruited, 14; age and
occupation, 16; representativeness
of, 170
Subterfuges, 159
Superego (conscience), 127, 128, 129,
132, 146, 165, 209

Tables: on breakoff points, 29; on
Experiments 1-4, 35; on Experiments
5-11, 60-61; on Experiments
12-16, 94-95; on Experiments
17-18, 119; on questionnaire in
follow-up study of obedience research,
195; on responses to question
on belief, 172; on responsibility by
defiant and obedient subjects, 203;
on subjects' estimates of pain felt
by victim, 171
Taylor, T., 180
Tinbergen, N., 123
TocqueviIle, Alexis de, 207
Touch-Proximity, see Experiment 4
Trobrianders, 142
Two Authorities: Contradictory Commands
(Experiment 15), 94-95
(table), 105-107, 110, 111
Two Authorities: One as Victim
(Experiment 16), 94-95 (table),
107-110, 111
Two Peers Rebel, see Experiment 17

Variability, 130-132
Victim in obedience experiment, 16, 17;
authority as, 94-95 (table), 99-105;
closeness of, 32-43; devaluation of,
9; feedback from, 22-23, 56-57; as
"learner," 18, 19, 22; and limited
contract, see Experiment 9; live
puppy, 203-204; protests of, 22;
subjects' estimates of pain felt by,
171 (table), 171-172
Vietnam War, 180-186, 211, 212
Voice-Feedback, see Experiment 2
Voluntarism, 115

Wallace, Mike, 183
Washington, Jack, 49-50
Wiener, Norbert, 125
Wirz, Henry, 186, 212
Women as Subjects, see Experiment 8
Wouk, Herman, 208

Yale Interaction Laboratory, 16, 55
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Previous

Return to Investigations of Government

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests

cron