Stanley Milgram's Obedience Experiment - Essay Example

Social Psychology 2nd May 2006 Psychology of Evil Introduction The holocaust was one of the most devastating events in human history but the magnitude of death involved the complicity of ordinary people, citizens of a nation, who would otherwise have ignored the agenda of the leaders. So exactly what drove these people to involve themselves in this vile and inhuman ‘cause’? Psychological researcher Stanley Milgram investigated the reasons for their actions and conducted experiments that tested the nature of obedience to authority. Conclusive evidence was also derived from Philip Zimbardo’s tests on prisoners. This paper details their observations both theoretical and experimental and addresses how humans can be conditioned to act in an evil manner. Maintaining the fabric of society to a large part depends on obedience of the citizens. Laws laid down by authority encourage obedience, required for harmonious communal living. But as experiments have shown, obedience is a deeply powerful ingrained behavior stemming from childhood that appears to override moral conduct, ethical training and sympathy. Experimental results indicate that individuals can very easily submit their entire moral standings to an authority. They may do just about anything to please the authority even when their internal moral gauge tells them that their actions are wrong. Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiment Conducted at Yale University between 1961 – 1962, Milgram’s experiments involved three participants – two individuals and the experimenter. The two individuals enter a psychological lab to study memory and learning. Each has a designation; one is the “teacher”, the other a “learner” (Milgram 1974). The experimenter explains that the study aims to observe the effects of punishment on learning. The learner, who in actuality is an actor working for the experimenter, is led to a room and seated in a minor version of the electric chair. An electrode is attached to his wrist. The experimenter explains that he will be read a list of word pairs and then tested for his ability to recall a word pair upon hearing the first word. If he fails to remember the associated word or answers wrongly he will receive increasingly intensities of electric shocks. The teacher is led to another room housing an instrument console with thirty lever switches labeled with a voltage designation ranging from 14 to 450 volts along with word designations such as slight shock, moderate shock, strong shock, very strong shock, intense shock, extreme intensity shock, sever shock for groups of four switches. When a switch is depressed, the corresponding lights turn red, an electric buzz is heard and a series of flashing displays and various clicks are sounded. To strengthen his belief in the machine’s legitimacy, the teacher (test subject) is given a sample 45 volt shock from the generator. When the experiments commences, the learner (actor) sometimes deliberately answers wrongly in order to ‘receive’ the shock. At various intensities he makes audible complaints from grunting to verbalizing his complaints and finally when the voltage increases to an unbearable amount, asks to be released from the experiment. Ordinarily, without the presence of the experimenter, the teacher would have quit the experiment having listened to the plight of the subject. But with the experimenter close by encouraging him to continue administering electric shocks, it becomes more and more difficult for the teacher to refuse. In the majority of the cases the teacher continues to participate in the experiment and only a few actually break from it. Out of the forty subjects tested, twenty-five actually continued right to the end, administering the total 450 volts. Others declined at a lower voltage level. This experiment reflects the commonality of obedience but does not acknowledge an individual’s tendency towards evil, rather highlights the individual’s propensity to listen to evil authority. Social psychologists theorize that the reason people go to extremes in the experiment is that they harbor deep seated unresolved feelings and aggressive instincts and that the experiments provide an outlet to release these compulsions. A common misconception is that the subjects who provided the most shock come from society’s fringes. But this is not the case. Many are ordinary middle class people, professionals and others from the working class environment. An important result Milgram deduced from the experiments was that the test subject allowed the authority to characterize the nature of the situation. This allowed the subjects to sidestep their own moral judgment, acknowledge and justify their actions. Milgram says, “Ideological justification is vital in obtaining willing obedience, for it permits the person to see his behavior as serving a desirable end. Only when viewed in this light, is compliance easily exacted.” Milgram says, “There is a propensity for people to accept definitions of action provided by legitimate authority. That is, although the subject performs the action, he allows authority to define its meaning. It is this ideological abrogation to the authority that constitutes the principle cognitive basis of obedience. If, after all, the world or the situation is as the authority defines it, a certain set of actions follows logically. (Cline 2006)” Milgram’s experiments also showed that a considerable number of people were willing to administer very painful shocks and their compliance was increased when the target subject was in another room and the experimenter commanded a great deal of authority. Appearances also mattered. If the authority wore white lab coat or looked serious but friendly, it bore some importance in the subject’s thinking. Even though the subject administered the shock, many did not take responsibility for the outcome. Milgram says, “When asked about responsibility for the victims suffering, he places the heaviest burden on the experimenter, then on the victim, and assigns the least to himself (Cline 2006).” Of the learner he says, "He agreed to it, and therefore must accept responsibility." The experimenter has "the biggest share of responsibility. I merely went on. Because I was following orders ...I was told to go on. And I did not get a cue to stop." The results of his experiments revealed that around 65% of the test subjects, ordinary citizens of New Haven, were prepared to administer up to 450 volts of seemingly harmful electric shocks to an apparently complaining victim as instructed by a supposed authority who wore a lab coat (Persaud 2005). This, despite the fact that the victim did nothing to deserve the punishment. This obviously proves that irrespective of who the victim is, it is the proximity and stature of the authority that overrides all moral notions that a test subject may have. The command of the authority over the test subject appears to be more powerful if the victim is unseen and even when the subject is not coerced into behaving in immoral ways. The experiment gives a frightening insight into why so many from the holocaust were willing participants in the rounding up and eradication of Jews. Even when the experiment was repeated in many countries and in various setting the results were always the same (Rothman 2005). The nationality of the test subjects did not matter, nor their religion or social standings. They always listened to and were obedient to authority even when there was no threat of punishment on the test subjects themselves. Stanley Milgram’s experiments exposed the world to the disturbing fact that as long as an authority figure was in charge and people deferred their morality to the authority, the individuals were capable of administering the ultimate act – that of killing another simply because an authority figure ordered them to. Evil in the world Sometimes when one group turns violent against another group, the rest of the world remain casual bystanders partly hoping the two warring factions would sort out their troubles themselves and partly to keep out of their business. This can have a detrimental effect. Among the warring groups, one may rise above and dominate the other. When in Rwanda, Hutus went on a rampage killing over seven hundred thousand Tutsis, the western governments avoided the conflict as well as using the term genocide to describe the killings. Not only groups or societies, but individuals can develop behaviors that make it likely they will repeatedly engage in evil acts. Such individuals or groups are not necessarily evil but do have an inclination for causing others harm. Destructive acts can be the result of psychological and social processes that cultivate into extreme forms (Staub 2003). Social psychologists ask two important questions when speaking of evil behavior. 1) Are wrong doers acting in the best interests of others and themselves? 2) Are others being harmed as well as themselves? A number of psychologists opine that individual differences are important factors of behavior either alone, in groups or in specific situations (Miller 2005). Is a person’s innate disposition responsible for his actions? Many social psychologists armed with empirical evidence, maintain that personal or dispositional factors are feeble predictors of behavior although are wrongly believed to be significant determinants of a person’s behavior. Situations often play a key role in influencing behavior. The term evil is often used loosely. With regards to Milgram’s obedience experiments and his application of the results to explain the holocaust, social psychologists such as Berkowitz criticize the treatment of the issue. Milgram’s results, they say, implicate only the test subjects as partaking in evil acts. No mention is given to the lab coated experimenter who issued the instructions and who is the real instigator of the evil. Berkowitz claims that Milgram has failed to recognize the different degrees of evil. In some contexts such as genocide, torture, terrorism etc. the term evil is used by social psychologist the same way as a lay person would use it. Another viewpoint on the term evil is that of escalation, i.e. small or trivial injustices over time have taken their toll until the end result is great evil dispensed towards the victim. Social psychologist put more emphasis on perception when dealing with social acts. Good and evil are in the eyes of the beholder. They stress on the people doing the observation who define the meaning at that point in time for a particular event. Sometimes failure to act, or absence of a behavior may either help or harm a situation. The question is, is the failure to help synonymous with causing harm? There are some occasions where this may be true. When an individual is assaulted on the street for monetary gain, bystanders who are too afraid to help may just watch or turn away from the scene of the crime. This of course is not an intent to cause additional harm to the victim rather avoid being caught up in the scene and face trouble themselves. In an experiment conducted in the 1980’s to display the nature people’s response to witnessing crime, some actors dressed as gang members in a London underground station, using physical persuasion, tried to obtain money from an elderly man (also an actor). Although other bystanders on the platform noticed the assault, none except one man, offered any assistance to the victim. Most casually walked away, refusing to be part of the scene. The ironic thing was the man who helped had done so when fewer people were present in the station. It turned out that the very presence of people discouraged bystanders from helping. Milgram experiments also noted that refusing to obey orders had a helping effect. When test subjects observed two peers (accomplices of the experimenter), refusing to obey the orders, they too declined to increase the voltage in the experiment. Milgram observed a general decrease in destructive behavior (Miller 2005). A Polish jurist named Raphael Lemkin, who wrote a book during the Second World War on genocide, later urged the United Nations into frame a Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Gellately 2003). The term genocide was defined as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” With the establishment of the UN, crimes such as genocide and “ethnic cleansing” could be tried by an international court. Professor of psychology Dr. Philip Zimbardo, in 1969 conducted experiments to seek answers to questions as to what extent and under what conditions is human behavior controlled by environment and physiological demand? He concluded that "Volition, commitment, and responsibility fuse to form the core of one pole of the basic human choice; so that the act of freely making a commitment for which one assumes responsibility individuates the decision-maker." His experiments supported the hypothesis of de-individuation as a "process in which a series of antecedent social conditions lead to a change in perception of self and others, and thereby to a lowered threshold of normally restrained behavior. (Williams 1998)" He described de-individuation as a three part process. (1) input variables such as anonymity, responsibility, group size, arousal lead to (2) subjective changes such as minimal self-observation, less concern for social evaluation, weakened emotional controls such as guilt, shame, fear and commitment all of which result in (3) output behaviors which are emotional, impulsive, irrational, regressive and under no controlling influence of external discriminative stimuli. These behaviors are difficult to terminate and are self-reinforced, intensified with repeated expressions of it. The individuals have a greater liking to the group or situation associated with the “released” behavior. The de-individuation model explains riots, mob violence, police brutality and prison violence. This model could be used to explain the holocaust. Many of the German officers involved with concentration camps over time became de-sensitized to the different forms of extermination methods and were passive bystanders to the killings. Their de-individuation allowed them to suppress emotion or guilt and let evil take its course. The Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo in 1971 was designed to study the power of roles, rules, group identity and situational validation of behavior. Zimbardo’s previous experiments illustrated the ease in which ordinary people in could be coerced into engaging in anti-social acts by putting them in situations where they felt anonymous (Williams 1998). The experiment began with an ad in the local paper for volunteers for an experiment on prison life and the chance to earn $15 a day. After interviews and psychological tests with seventy applicants, around two dozen were selected for the experiment. After being arrested and booked for minor offences in a real jail, they were blind-folded and driven to a makeshift prison in the basement hall of Stanford psychology building. Half were assigned prison guard status, given uniforms and told not to use violence but only to maintain the prison. The other half were labeled prisoners. With roles set, the experiment began with experimenters watching via remote camera feed. On day two, prisoners staged a revolt but the guards crushed it using aggressive tactics, humiliation and dehumanization. The situation became worse at night when the guards thought the staff, overseeing the experiment were not watching. Guards tended to verbally abuse and mistreat the prisoners. Severe psychological distress resulted in the release of five inmates early on. The experiment was designed to last two weeks but had to be terminated after just six days. When the subjects were interviewed about their experiences Zimbardo discovered that most of the variables of the de-individuation model were present in the experiment. The prison environment they found themselves in, offered anonymity – being away from family and friends their personalities changed into the roles of guards and prisoners. Both groups had physical involvement in the forms of punishment. Based on his own experiments and the obedience experiments of Stanley Milgram, Zimbardo concluded that altered behavior whether positive or negative was due not to individual’s personality (dispositional attribution), but due to the nature of the situation (situational attribution). Situational Theory A number of early studies conducted on leadership identified two leadership styles – task oriented autocratic style and the relationship oriented democratic style. Later studies found that leaders displayed one of four combinations of task and relationship behaviours. In situational theory, the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of leadership styles depends on the appropriate behaviours leaders exhibit in a certain situation (Gerard 1997). The best known leadership model was developed by management guru Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey. Their model created in the 1960s focused on analysing situations and implementing an appropriate leadership style. This model has worked for most people and in environments and has proved quite popular. Hersey-Blanchard Situational Theory suggests that leadership style in any environment should be matched to the maturity of the subordinates. Maturity measured in relation to a specific task, has two parts: Psychological maturity - Self-confidence of the selected leaders and ability and readiness to accept responsibility. Job maturity – The leader’s capacity to apply relevant skills and technical knowledge to the task at hand. When subordinate maturity increases, leadership should be more relationship-motivated than task-motivated. For four degrees of subordinate maturity, from highly mature to highly immature, leadership can consist of: Delegating to subordinates. Leaders are involved in decision making and problem solving although the responsibility lies partly with the subordinates who decides the time and the manner in which the leader is involved. Participating with subordinates. Leaders make daily decisions, such as allocation of tasks to the subordinates. Yet part of the responsibility rests with the subordinates. Selling ideas to subordinates. Leaders not only offer ideas and suggestions but request them from the subordinates leading to a two-way communication. Ultimately the decisions remain with the leader. Telling subordinates what to do. Leaders describe the roles of the subordinates and also manages them. Leaders make the decisions which are then announced. Another situational model is Fiedlers Contingency model which states that group performance depends on: Leadership style. The leader’s ability to offer motivation to complete a task and the ability to motivate a healthy relationship with the subordinates. Situational favourableness. This is determined by three factors: 1. Leader-member relations – How well is a leader accepted and supported by the subordinates. 2. Task structure – The leader’s ability to structure and define a task and laying out clear goals and procedures. 3. Position power - The leader’s ability to control a group through rewards and punishment. Favourable situations are achieved when these three factors are present in high levels. Leaders who are relationship-motivated are most effective in reasonably favourable situations. Leaders who are task-motivated are most effective at either poor situations or fortunate situations. Fiedler recommends that rather than change their leadership style, leaders change their situation to achieve effectiveness and obedience from their subordinates. In short, effective leadership depends on unflagging obedience. A final testament to the effectiveness of obedience comes from Hannah Arendt’s 1963 book, Eichmann in Jerusalem. Eichmann was a high-ranking Nazi official in Germany and responsible for the extermination of millions of people during the holocaust particularly Jews. In his 1961 trial, he claimed that he was only following orders from above. Arendt concluded that apart from having a desire to improve his career, Eichmann displayed no hint of anti-Semitism or psychological damage. She called him the embodiment of the “banality of evil” since, in his trial he appeared to have quite an ordinary and common personality, showing no guilt or hatred. She rejects the common notion that Nazi generals were all psychopaths and seething with hate. She also disagrees with the interpretation that ordinary people can commit terrible crimes if placed in the right situation and given correct incentives (Wikipedia 2006). Conclusion Milgram stated, “We do not observe compliance to authority merely because it is a transient cultural or historical phenomenon, but because it flows from the logical necessities of social organization. If we are to have social life in any organized form - that is to say, if we are to have society - then we must have members of society amenable to organizational imperatives. (Blass 2002)” Today Milgram’s and Zimbardo’s experiments are considered unethical and review boards would not grant approval for them to be carried out (Williams 1998). However, they have provided a wealth of knowledge about human behavior. Commenting on Milgram’s and his own studies, Zimbardo noted the three major research themes in each: a) Obedience to authority requires individuals to first join the myth-making process of creating authority figures who then must justify their authority through the evidence of our submission and obedience to them; b) The reason individuals can be manipulated so easily is because they maintain a false impression of personal exemption and personal control, at the same time being insensitive to the power of social forces and ‘discriminable’ stimuli within the situation, which are powerful determinants of action. c) Evil deeds are rarely the outcome of evil people with evil motives, but are the product of good officials simply doing their job and being obedient to their authority. Milgrams and Zimbardo’s experiments confirmed the fact that ordinary people could be persuaded to act sadistically even in the absence of physical intimidation. Humans beings are not born evil and need not have innate evil tendencies nor do they have a compulsion to act in culpable or inhumane ways (Persaud 2005). But social and authoritative pressures often force them to commit crimes against humanity including genocide. People often like to think that when confronted with a moral dilemma they would act in a conscientious and socially appropriate manner. Milgrams obedience experiments prove that in powerful socially constrained circumstances a person’s moral sense can very easily be influenced, proving the legitimacy of situational theory. Works Cited Blass, Thomas (2002). The Man Who Shocked The World. Psychology Today. 1st May 06 Cline, Austin (2006). Agnosticism / Atheism. Stanley Milgram. About. 29th Apr 06 Gellately, Robert & Kiernan, Ben (2003) The Specter of Genocide : Mass Murder in Historical Perspective. Cambridge University Press. P. 3, 5, 6 Gerard (1997). Contingency Models. 30th Apr 06 Milgram, Stanley (1974). The Perils of Obedience. 1st May 06 Miller, Artgur G. (2005). The Social Psychology of Good and Evil. The Guilford Press. P. 2,3,4,5 O’Toole, Kathleen (1997). The Stanford Prison Experiment. 29th Apr 06 Persaud, Raj (2005). The Man Who Shocked the World. BMJ Learning. 30th Apr 06 Rothman, Solomon (2005). Stanley Milgrams Psychological Experiment on Obedience of Authority. Associated Content. 30th Apr 06 Staub, Ervin (2003). The Psychology of Good and Evil : Why Children, Adults, and Groups Help and Harm Others. Cambridge University Press. P.4, 5 Wikipedia (2006) Adolf Eichmann. Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia. 29th Apr 06 Wikipedia (2006). Situational Leadership Theory. 1st May 06 Williams, Rebacca (1998). Philip Zimbardo. A psychologist’s experience with deviance. 29th Apr 06 Zimbardo, Philip G. (1997). What messages are behind todays cults? ICSA. Zimbardo, Philip G. (2006). Answers.com 30th Apr 06 Zimbardo, Philip G. (2006). Stanford Prison Experiment. A Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment Conducted at Stanford University. 29th Apr 06 Zimbardo, Philip. G., (1969). The human choice: Individuation, reason, and order versus deindividuation, impulse, and chaos. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. p.237-307. Read More