Would we really be willing to go against our morals if an authority ordered us to do so? That’s what he tried to understand Stanley Milgram through an experiment. His clearly affirmative answer to this question, however, has raised many doubts in other scholars who over time have discovered methodological flaws and publications of partial results. In short, according to the latest analyses we are not all obedient up to this point.
Stanley Milgram’s experiment, conducted in the early 1960s at Yale University, is one of the best known and most discussed studies in social psychology. His goal was to investigate the extent to which people were willing to obey an authority, even when it meant harming someone. Over time, however, the results presented by Milgram have been the subject of strong methodological criticismsin particular those made by the psychologist Gina Perrywhich re-examined original materials, interviews and recordings, showing a much more complex reality than that published in official reports.
Objectives and results of Milgram’s study
The psychologist Stanley Milgram he began his practice shortly after the ad trial Adolf Eichmannone of the main organizers of the deportation of Jews during Nazism. Many, listening to the words that the hierarch had pronounced in his defense (“I just followed orders”), they wondered if people could really commit terrible actions simply to obey a legitimate authority. Milgram therefore decided to create a controlled experimental situation that would highlight the dynamics of obedience: to what extent would an individual be willing to go against their conscience to carry out the instructions of an authority?
To find out, the psychologist placed an ad in a local newspaper recruiting volunteers between the ages of 20 and 50, paid $4.50 an hour, to participate in a learning experiment. The subjects who accepted were welcomed by an experimenter who explained to them the dynamics of the study: it would have to be investigated the effects of punishment on the ability to learn. Through a mock extraction, one participant was assigned the role of “teacher”, while an accomplice of the experimenter played the role of “pupil”. The teacher had to ask a series of mnemonic questions and in case of error administer, via a current generator, electric shocks of increasing intensity from 15 to 450 volts. The experimenters assure that the shocks could be painful, but not dangerous. Naturally the tremors were fakebut the participant was not aware of this. Every time the student made a mistake and received a shock, he emitted moans, complaints, protests and, beyond a certain voltage threshold, he asked to be released because the pain had become unbearable. If the teacher hesitated to use the generator, the experimenter (an authority figure in a lab coat), insisted with standardized phrases such as: “Please continue”, “The experiment requires you to continue”, “You have no choice, you must continue”.
Well, even though the last of these tremors was potentially lethal, about 65% of participants he even pressed the button for the last shock, only because the experimenter ordered it. Milgram later published the results, showing how a surprisingly high percentage of people were willing to obey authorities even against their own morals.
Gina Perry’s interpretation and criticism of the original experiment
Since the 2000s, the Australian psychologist Gina Perry conducted a thorough review of the original materials held in the Yale University archives. His work, published in the book “Behind the Shock Machine”, called into question the original narrative, showing doubts about the conduct of the experiment and its official interpretation.
- Perry argues that Milgram only reported data that emphasized maximal obedience, omitting variants in which participants obeyed much less. In some areas, such as Bridgeportonly three people reached the maximum shock.
- Many subjects questioned the “experimental realism”: only half believed that the experiment was real, and of this half two-thirds disobeyed. Those who disobeyed the most tended, paradoxically, to believe that the student was really receiving the shock.
- Perry notes inconsistencies in procedures: Milgram stated that the experimenter stopped after four verbal prompts, but in reality some people were prompted up to fourteen times.
- On theethicsPerry points out that many participants left Yale convinced that they had inflicted real shocks, even though Milgram had foreseen procedures “de-hoaxing”. Some even went so far as to check death announcements for two weeks, probably because Milgram did not want to contaminate future recruiting parties.
- Finally, Milgram led 23 variations of the experiment, often with results opposite to those reported: in more than half of the cases, the majority of volunteers he disobeyedsome offered to switch roles, others gave lower shocks or emphasized correct answers to avoid punishment.
Obedience and resistance: what Milgram’s experiment really teaches us
In short, humans do not obey blindly: most negotiate, resist, doubt. It is true, some social contexts characterized by asymmetric relationshipssuch as hierarchical professional relationships, group dynamics or situations of emotional dependence, they can favor higher levels of conformity at the expense of personal moral norms. The picture that emerges, however, is more nuanced: obedience to authority exists, but it is less uniform and less automated than what the experimenter highlighted in the study. The most significant contribution of the experiment, however, concerns the methodology and ethics of psychological researchas it led to the development of stricter standards for the protection of participantsto the need for greater transparency in the presentation of data and the importance of interpret critically and with caution the evidence, without considering them a priori as absolute truths.
