Psychology and Our Mind: The Millgram Experiment

[Razor]

So. I'll have another Batman and Philosophy thread up in a bit, promise. However, I felt that this was a much better thread. It explores our willingness to submit to a higher power. I present to you, the Milgram Experiment.

BBC Reenactment of the Milgram Experiment
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Stanley Milgram was confused by the Nazi soldiers who argued that they were simply "following orders" in respect to the work around the Jewish Concentration Camps. How could someone so completely surrender to an outside influence, despite the obvious potential death of another human being? How could they do so without outright refusal?

...If the Nazi soldiers could do so, could we?

Milgram hypothesized that the soldiers simply gave into the will of the higher generals and commanders of the German army. The soldiers moved complete responsibility to their commanding officers, and therefore absolved themselves of any guilt. So he created the experiment to replace the soldiers with ordinary civilians and the commanding officers with scientists.

Side Note: The comparison is valid. We are brought up from a young age that authority figures know what they are talking about, and we should defer to them. We obey our parents and police completely. If we are taking part in a scientific experiment, the obedience transcends to that of the soldier/commander relationship.

Milgram held this experiment in the 70's if I remember correctly. He had the participants give questions to another person. If the person answered wrongly, then the participant was to shock the other person with an increasingly larger shock. The shocks on the box went from 15V up to a voltage of XXX. The voltages were also labeled from "Harmless" to "Deadly." The participants were given everything to know that what they were doing was completely and utterly dangerous. In fact, when they got towards the end of the experiment, the participants knew that they were killing the other. This was made certain with the added revelation that the person answering the questions had a heart problem that would be exacerbated by the electric shock.

Now, for the results. The "other person" that was answering the questions was never hooked up to the machine and received no shocks. They were actors, and were paid to get the answers wrong and express horrific pain as the shocks went up in scale. Toward the end, around 200+ volts, the actor would express that they had a heart condition and beg for the examiner to stop. The doctor (Milgram) would insist the participant continue if they showed any want to quit. After 350 volts (if I remember correctly) the actor would stop answering. The doctor would ask the participant to treat that as a wrong answer and administer a shock.

..Over 65% continued the experiment to the end.

Milgram controlled for the "distance" variable in his next two experiments by moving the actors to either

A) Within eye sight

or

B) Right next to the participant.

The results did not vary. The participants showed a outright willingness to kill as long as the scientist (or higher authority) assured them it was what they were supposed to do, no matter if the person was right in front of them or no.


Oh, right. The thread. Should Milgram have done this experiment? What does this experiment have to say about our psyche as a whole? Stake your claim.

 

[HBK-aholic]

I'm currently taking Psychology for my second year at college - last year this was one of the first studies we looked at, and I completely loved it. How people can do things we usually class as pure evil is the main reason I'm interested in psychology and Milgram's study highlighted arguably the most important. We do what people in authority tell us because it's how we're brought up. The experiment was done in a prestigious university - that alone was identified as one of the factors for obeying. Teamed with the white coat, and his constant command prompts, which he used regularly to guilt people into continuing, you see a formula for bad acts emerging - a scary one.

It could be argued he broke ethical guidelines in doing this experiment - you can see easily the distress caused by doing this to some of the participants therefore in that sense a strong argument can emerge against Milgram. The experiment lacked ecological validity - this is nothing like real life therefore can we generalise it to be so? And if not was there a point?

 

[jbwphoto1]

What's even more interesting to me is the Zimbardo Prison Study. Imagine spending a weekend with your classmates with half of you are prisoners and half as prison guards. More than just the belief you're causing physical pain and anguish, but actually doing it, just because a professor told you to. The following link is supposed to be the official link for the experiment http://www.prisonexp.org/.

Just for the record, I have a degree in psychology and have been a fan for over 30 years starting with a foster child not taking a psych book to class and leaving it home at my grandparents house.

 

[Gregor_Samsa]

jbw is correct about the Zimbardo study.
If memory serves me correct the students acting as guards were not discouraged nor encouraged from reprimanding the "prisoners" in the extreme ways that would follow. I think it ties in with the Milgram experiment perfectly. All it took was one of the "guards" to take an alpha role in the scenario and act on his impulses to punish in a way we view as inhumane. The other "guards" recognized this first alpha as authority and followed along.
So many parallels can be drawn to situations on a larger world scale. Zimbardo was heavily criticized for letting the experiment get as out of hand as it did but it was an important step in furthering our understanding of the human psyche. Just what are we capable of.

 

[Loveless]

Ah yeah I love this stuff, Millgram, Zimbardo, the story of Kitty Genovese. I remember there was also a guy who did stuff on the subway but I can't for the life of me remember his name.
To answer the question, yes it's necessary to study this stuff and understand what happened during WWII. However there are certain ethics and rules that need to be adhered to and the Zimbardo prison experiment went way too far. I do believe it was that experiment that lead to the introduction of rules for such studies
I look on this kind of research in the same way I look at testing on animals, it's a necessary evil and important stuff was learnt from these experiments in a era when psychological study wasn't hampered.

 

[Gregor_Samsa]

Loveless,

I believe your thinking of Bernhard Goetz. He's actually out of prison now, and making the rounds on talk shows.

 

[Loveless]

Nope, definitely not. This guy was was staging experiments on the subway to test deferred responsibility. It's annoying me that I cant remember anything about him or the tests.