Full Blog: Obedience to Authority

Book Author: Stanley Milgram

summary:
In chapter 1, Milgram introduced us to why the issue of obedience was important to study. His conclusion was that a dilemma faces anyone who enters into an agreement to be part of a system. When the system requires them to do something with which they disagree, they must either be loyal to their moral standards or loyal to the system.

In chapter 2, Milgram explained the set up of his study.

In chapter 3,  he asked psychological professionals what they thought a person would do when confronted with his experiment. Most thought that people would not agree to do what he would ask.

In chapter 4 he described the basic series of experiments in which the closeness of the "victim" would be manipulated.

In chapter 5 he gave us detailed information about how particular people behaved in a stressful situation, and the reasons they gave for their behavior. These first 5 chapters are the heart of the book.

Chapters 6, 8, and 9 are additional variations on the study.

Chapter 7 contains more interviews with subjects.

Chapters 10 through 12 contain Milgram's attempt to explain why obedience to authority has such a strong hold on our behavior. He analyzes the cognitive as well as emotional aspect.
These lead to his establishing of the agentic state, the psychological state the obedient subject is in when he or she is obeying authority.

In the  final chapter Milgram relates his findings in comparison to the real world and discusses the Vietnam War. He attempts to correlate obedience in the war to the obedience he observed in the lab.

discussion:

Having read about Milgram's experiment in "Opening Skinner's box" by Lauren Slater, I thought I had a good overall understanding of his experiments. This book taught me that his experiments were quite involved, and that they included  number of quantitative observations. Always surprising to read, though, is the reaction of participants to his experiments. I always felt I knew the outcome of his experiments, but would then be proven wrong. No participant ever questioned the procedure outlined by Milgram, even after he gave them  a chance to ask questions.


After reaching the 75-volt level, they were confronted with their fellow participant's first sign of pain, and 10% of them responded to this experession of discomfort by speaking to the experimenter. By 150 volts, 19 (47.5%) participants had at least checked with the experimenter about the experimental procedure. By 270 volts, all (100%) of the participants had at least checked with the experimenter about the procedure. It was observed of the people that did not comply with the experimenter it was hard to be deviant of the instructions the longer they followed directions.

Regardless of what we think about Milgram's experiments, it's undeniable that he has made us reconsider what we think we know about human behaviour, free will, and obedience to authority.



Book Reading #36: Obedience to Authority

Book Author: Stanley Milgram

Chapter 9:
In this Chapter, Milgram describes two variations on his experiment. He then discusses the effect of the group. Next, he gives us his definition of conformity and obedience. According to him, the main differences is that obedience to authority requires some type of hierarchical system while conformity is simply following suit, but does not necessarily mean obedience.

Chapter 10:
In this chapter, Milgram attempts to figure the root causes of obedience. This analysis is mainly based off of the experiments described in the previous chapters. We also learn a new term from Milgram which is agentic. The agentic state occurs in the case of a person feeling they have been called upon to carry out a person's deeds. This state, says Milgram, is an important block to his analysis.

Chapter 11:
In this chapter, Milgram explores what things can help predict a person's behaviour lik a person's upbringing, the institutions he's been in, and if he has been subject to any type of rewards system. Milgram also analyzes the behaviours observed during experimentation and tries to justify them. Some possible explanations are: a perception of a genuine authoritative figure, the lack of any objections to the authority figure, and a visible link between the function andcommands being given.
The agentic state is also further explained with its characteristics. 

Chapter 12:

Chapter 12 changes the focus on obedience and its origin to disobedience. Indeed, he discusses what sources produce strain and ways people recuperate from strain through explicit acts of disobedience with the authority. This also can be translated by physical responses such as trembling and sweating.

Chapter 13:
In chapter 13 Milgram provides a different angle on his analysis: Aggression. For him, that cannot be used as a valid explanation though. He also mentions soldiers and a different experiment done by Buss and Berkowitz that investigated aggression.

Chapter 14:
In chapter 14, Milgram defends some of the assertions that have been brought up to nullify his experiments. Some of them are about his findings. How could his findings be valid considering subjects did not think they were really shocking other people. Another criticism is on the pool of people from which he chose to conduct his experiment. Another criticism is on the feasibility of the experiment outside of a laboratory setting. Milgram address each critic one by one.

Book Reading #34: Obedience to Authority

Book Author: Stanley Milgram

Chapter 1:

In chapter 1, Milgram introduces the reader to why the issue of obedience is important to study. He gives a short description of his study, and compares his conclusions to those Hannah Arendt made about the Nazi Adolf Eichmann. His conclusion in that chapter is that a dilemma faces anyone who enters into an agreement to be part of a system. When the system requires them to do something with which they disagree, they must either be loyal to their moral standards or loyal to the system.

Chapter 2:



In chapter 2 Milgram gives an explanation of the set up done for his study. This includes describing how he obtained participants, posted flyers, determined location, procedure of the experiment, and how data, and user feedback were collected.  

Chapter 3:

In chapter 3,  Milgram asks many psychological professionals what they think a person would do in the study, and finds agreement that there would be little obedience.

Chapter 4:

In chapter 4, Milgram describes the basic series of experiments in which the closeness of the "victim" was manipulated.  In the first, the teacher would only get a pounding on the wall from the victim at 300 volts. In the second experiment,  vocal protests were used. In third, the victim was placed in the same room as the teacher.  And in the last, the victim only got shocked when he put his/her hand on a shock plate.

Chapter 5:

In chapter 5, Milgram gives us some detailed information about how particular people behaved in this stressful situation, and the reasons they gave for their behavior. This is months after the experiment.

Chapter 6::Chapter 7::Chapter 8:

Chapters 6 and 8 are additional variations on the study. Mligram changed some of his parameters like:

changing the location of the experiment, trying the experiment with other victims and experimenters, including using a contract, performing the study under a different name, letting a subject to choose the shock level, etc... .

Chapter 7 contains more interviews with subjects.  In particular, one of the subjects was from Germany, and at 210 volts she decided to stop. Milgram attributes this to her exposure to Nazi propaganda.