Psych Files Pt2

Well hello, fellow forumers! I'm back with another wacky experiment 

This second experiment in my series is quite shocking (bad pun intended :lol: ). Stanley Milgram began trials to test for obedience in 1961, which was again, before there were really any laws on experimental ethics.

Here's an overview of how it went!



What was it for? Milgram asked the question "Were those that participated in the Holocaust simply being obedient and following orders?" He wanted to measure whether people, being put in high stress situations, were obedient to authority, regardless of their conscience. He conducted this experiment with 40 people.

What was the setup? There were three roles in this experiment; the participant was the 'Teacher'; an actor played the 'Learner'; and a person involved with the study played the 'Experimenter', aka the authority figure.



The Teacher and Experimenter were placed in one room, the Learner in another. The Learner was supposedly hooked up to an electric chair, which the Teacher controlled from the other room. They communicated via intercom.

The Teacher was told that they were participating in a word-association task, where they had to read a pair of words, then repeat the first word, and give the Learner 4 word choices to match the pair. If the Learner answered incorrectly, the Teacher had to administer an electric shock. The Teacher also had to increase the voltage of the shock each time.

What happened? The participant and the actor met in a waiting room, where the actor told the participant that they had a heart condition, and were nervous about the shocks. They then drew roles out of a hat, where the participant always chose Teacher and the actor always said they chose Learner.

The participant then received a 'sample shock' of 45volts, at the lower end of the scale, to show what the Learner would be feeling for each wrong answer. The Teacher then watched as the Learner was strapped into an electric chair, and was told it was to minimise excessive movement during the shocks.

The Teacher was then taken to the next room, and sat in front of a switchboard, supposedly attached to the Learner's chair. The switchboard went from 'Slight Shock' at 15volts, to 'XXX' (indicating potential death) at 450volts.



The Learner was then instructed to purposefully get answers wrong, and the Teacher administered the shocks. The Teacher was also told to increase the voltage each time.

At shock level 300, the Learner was instructed to begin yelling and screaming, and pounding on the wall with each 'shock', which could be heard by the Teacher in the next room. From this point on, the Learner stops answering the questions, however, the Teacher is instructed to keep asking them, and keep administering shocks for no answers.

The participants started showing distress and concern for the Learner around this point, and began to ask the Experimenter what they should do. The Experimenter would insist they continue with the experiment. They used four authoritative responses -

First, "Please continue, or Please go on";
Second, "The experiment requires that you continue";
Third, "It is absolutely essential that you continue";
And finally, "You have no other choice, you must go on".

Only if the subject refused to continue at the 4th statement did the experiment end.

What were the results? Of the 40 people that participated, 26 continued to administer shocks up to 450volts, though most did show extreme distress at having to do so.

Not one of the participants stopped before the 300volt mark, where the Learner began yelling and banging, though 5 did stop at this point, and another 4 stopped at the next shock of 315volts.



At the end of the experiment, all participants showed some form of emotional response - either relief that it was over, regret for their actions, or anxious behaviors like fiddling with their hands, and rubbing their faces. This is an excerpt from the original Milgram article, a response from one of the experimental observers.


Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioural Study of Obedience. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67 (4), 371-378

The conclusions? Milgram had quite a few conclusions, but these were a few of his main points. He made an observation about how there was no threat to the Teacher at any point, only their own sense of obligation to the experiment. Given that 65% of people continued to the end, Milgram alluded to the fact that, had there been some form of threat, perhaps that figure would've been higher.

He also concluded that all participants were in conflict between both the authority of the Experimenter, and the wellbeing of the Learner. He thought that perhaps because the Experimenter was present in the room, and the Learner was not visible, the Experimenter was harder to ignore.

What do you think you would've done? Would you have wanted to stop at the 300volt mark when you heard the Learner in pain? Before then? Or do you think you'd go to the end?

*NB* written with solemn respect

 

 C4, I did say supposedly.. But you're right, I should've made that clearer..

 

I'm with you, Mags, I think the same. I don't want to believe I'd continue shocking someone after they stopped responding, especially knowing they had a heart condition, but who knows what it'd be like to be in that situation 

 

 They were directive and firm, Meggy, but not rude or threatening 

 

 That's very true, Bri, this original experiment was conducted over 50 years ago.. But like Bri said, it's been replicated and altered many times over that period, and the outcomes have been pretty similar.

And thank you Justin 

 

 Oops, *Panda, and Bri