Milgram (Obedience)

Understanding the theory behind Milgram lets you explain the study, not just recount it.

Obedience = following a direct order from a perceived authority figure. It differs from conformity (matching a group's behaviour without an order).

The historical question. After the Holocaust, people asked how ordinary people could carry out atrocities. One dispositional answer was that 'Germans are different' — that they have an obedient personality. Milgram wanted to test whether obedience was really a feature of the person (dispositional) or of the situation (situational).

The agentic state (Milgram's explanation). Milgram argued people operate in two states:

• The autonomous state — you act on your own conscience and feel responsible for your actions.
• The agentic state — you see yourself as an agent carrying out the wishes of an authority, so you feel the authority is responsible, not you. Shifting into the agentic state allows people to obey orders that conflict with their conscience.

Legitimate authority. We are socialised to obey people who hold legitimate authority (e.g. a scientist, a police officer). The Yale setting and the experimenter's grey lab coat gave the study legitimacy, increasing obedience.

Why this matters. Milgram's startling result (most people obeyed) supports a situational explanation: place ordinary people in the right situation, under a legitimate authority, and obedience follows — you don't need a special 'obedient personality'.

Psychology being investigated: obedience and social pressure.

Aim. To investigate how far ordinary people would obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform actions that conflicted with their conscience — specifically, to give increasing, apparently dangerous electric shocks to another person. Milgram wanted to see whether obedience is situational (a product of the situation) rather than dispositional (a product of personality), testing the 'Germans are different' idea.

Sample: 40 American men, aged 20–50, from the New Haven area (near Yale), recruited by newspaper advert/direct mail — a volunteer (self-selected) sample with varied occupations. They were paid $4.50 simply for turning up (so payment did not pressure them to obey).

Procedure:

1. At Yale University. Roles were rigged by a fixed draw: the real participant was always the 'teacher'; a confederate ('Mr Wallace', a likeable 47-year-old) was always the 'learner'. An experimenter in a grey lab coat ran the study.
2. The teacher gave the learner a word-pair memory test. For each wrong answer, the teacher had to give an electric shock, increasing by 15V each time on a generator labelled from 15V ('Slight Shock') up to 450V ('Danger: Severe Shock', then 'XXX').
3. No real shocks were given. The learner (in another room) responded with predetermined wrong answers. In this 1963 version there was no voice feedback from the learner — at 300V and 315V the learner pounded on the wall, then gave no further response.
4. If the teacher hesitated, the experimenter used four standardised verbal prods, in order:
   • "Please continue."
   • "The experiment requires that you continue."
   • "It is absolutely essential that you continue."
   • "You have no other choice, you must go on."
5. The participant's behaviour was observed (signs of stress) and they were interviewed/debriefed afterwards.

• 100% of participants continued to at least 300V.
• 65% (26 of 40) continued to the maximum 450V — full obedience.
• Participants showed extreme tension and distress: sweating, trembling, stuttering, groaning, biting their lips, and nervous laughter. Three participants had full-blown seizures.
• Many protested verbally but still continued to obey when prodded.

• Ordinary people will obey an authority figure even to the point of (apparently) seriously harming an innocent person — obedience is far more common than people predict.
• Obedience is situational, not dispositional: the result undermines the 'Germans are different' idea, because ordinary American men obeyed in the right situation.
• People can enter an agentic state, feeling the authority is responsible, which helps explain how atrocities can occur when ordinary people follow orders.

Strengths

• High control / standardised (same setting, same learner responses, identical prods) → the study is replicable and the data reliable.
• Useful insight + mixed data — quantitative (% obeying) plus qualitative (observed distress, interviews); it transformed our understanding of obedience and atrocity.
• Supports a clear conclusion about the power of the situation.

Weaknesses — ethics (a major issue)

• Deception — participants believed the shocks and the learner's suffering were real.
• Lack of fully informed consent — they could not consent to what really happened.
• Psychological harm — extreme stress (sweating, seizures); arguably not protected from harm.
• Right to withdraw compromised — the prods ("you must go on") pressured participants to stay. (Milgram did debrief participants and reported most were glad to have taken part — a partial defence.)

Other weaknesses

• Low ecological validity — giving electric shocks for a memory test is not an everyday obedience situation.
• Generalisability — only 40 American men, so findings may not generalise to women or other cultures (an androcentric sample).

Issues & debates

• Individual vs situational: strong support for situational explanations.
• Application to everyday life: understanding and resisting destructive obedience (e.g. in the military, atrocities, the workplace).