Assignment 9: Obedience to Authority

'Obedience to Authority' - Stanley Milgram

Chapter 1- Milgram introduces his experiment in the first chapter. He mentions that he is trying to figure out if people have changed since WWII. He wants to find out if the human race has learned anything or is still capable of committing the same atrocities the Nazis did. Milgram also discusses what it means to be obedient.

Chapter 2- This chapter was on Method of Inquiry. Milgram explains how he recruited each of the participants for the experiment. None of the participants were students from Yale because he wanted to go outside of the bubble and get 'normal' responses from everyday people. He then told the reader how he went about recruiting these people through ads and the like.

Chapter 3- This chapter was on the Expected Behavior of the learners. Stanley Milgram took a survey on his projected experiment and polled how many people they thought would go through with the full experiment or where they would stop. Milgram did not tell the people that the experiment had a fixed learner though.

Chapter 4- This chapter was on Closeness of the Victim. Milgram explains how the proximity of the learner to the participant affected their obedience. If the learner was in a different room where the participant could only hear them, they would not be as inclined to disobey a scientist who was giving orders. If the learner was in the room and they could physically see them, they would be more likely to disobey.

Chapter 5- This chapter was on Confronting Authority. Milgram relates to the reader several different subjects and their testimonials. One of the participants was an electrical engineer who refused to administer that kind of voltage to a human because he knew what would cause them pain. He was also very interested in their work. Depending on the psyche of the individual, they would be more likely to go on with the experiment.

Chapter 6- This chapter was on adding different kinds of spins to the experiment. For instance, the learner or actor would let the participant know that they have a heart condition to try and get inside their head. If the scientist was a female or if the personality of the scientist was mean or passive also was introduced. 

Chapter 7- Milgram recaps again the different experiments he has performed. He explains a few individual cases and how they reacted. Some of the people stopped abruptly in the middle of the experiment others went through all the way.

Chapter 8- Milgram teased different roles in this chapter. He had the scientists take orders from the participant instead of vice versa. This lead to more disobedience because the participants would not trust the authority if they were not giving the orders.

Chapter 9- This chapter details the effects of groups. We see the conformity of groups when there are multiple participants. If the majority of participants agree on a decision, the last participant will not want to be the last one out, so he will be more likely to conform.

Chapter 10-  Milgram goes more into theory in this chapter. Milgram discusses in minute detail why he believes people obey orders. He also talks about how the setting influences their decision and the proximity of the authority.

Chapter 11- Milgram discusses how the participants past would determine their obedience. He mentions family, background, education, income etc. He lists some binding factors which also keep the participants in check.

Chapter 12- Milgram lists some examples of strains and disobedience in this chapter. He defines different types of strains and how they cause participants to crack under pressure aka disobey or obey. If they disobey that means they broke the binding factor.

Chapter 13- Milgram lists aggression in this chapter and how it affects disobedience. If the experimenter wanted to hurt the learner, he explains how aggression might increase the chances of them shocking the learner. Milgram lets the reader know that its not the aggression, but still the relationship between the experimenter and the participant.

Chapter 14- Milgram just responds to some other arguments in this chapter. Others had other theories that he refuted and stood by his original experiment. These arguments were varying and attacked different points of the experiment.

Chapter 15- Milgram just recaps the experiment in this chapter. He mentions that obedience to authority can be extremely dangerous. Given the right conditions and circumstances, anyone can be put on the spot and obey some extraordinary, horrendous, requests.

Summary:

            I enjoyed the majority of this book. The testimonials from the participants proved to be the most interesting for me as I wanted to delve into their backgrounds and see what would make them obey or not disobey. The spots where Milgram starts to drag (at least for me) was the theory behind the experiment. He really started to lose me with the in depth analysis, but I can see why he thought it was necessary.

            In terms of preparing for the experiment, I was interested to see how Milgram chose his test pool. He excised the possibility of university associates or students to be in this experiment and only tested adults. It made it that much more fascinating to see the predictions versus the actual results. I think the predictions were something like 1/4 of the people thought the test subjects would go through with the extreme voltage but in reality, 26/40 went all the way in the voltage.

            The next fact that I want to touch on is the different types of experiments setup. The proximity of the experimenter to the learner to the participant played a huge factor in the overall obedience. If the participant was in close proximity to the learner, he would be more likely to disobey. Likewise, if the experimenter was not in the room, the participant's disobedience factor would rise exponentially. Aggression did not really factor into this experiment according to Milgram. It was more of the relationship between the participant and the experimenter. If the participant believed that the experimenter was in the one who held all the power, he or she would be more likely to obey.

            The morality of this experiment is a whole different ball-game. Back in the 70's when he performed this experiment, there existed little regulation on this area. He sure changed that didn't he? But personally, I don't think it was super ethical because people might not want to know that they are capable of shocking another human being to death or will obey authority under extreme circumstances. I know I would not want to go through with it.

            In conclusion, this book was a pretty easy read. I enjoyed seeing the different outcomes with the different scenarios. The different focus groups that he established predicted differently how each experiment would end, but none of them were quite correct in their assessment. While nothing like this will ever be experimented with again due to the new restrictions that this experiment brought on, I still believe it was very interesting and maybe even necessary for the advancement of the field.