Would we really be willing to go against our morals if an authority ordered us to do so? This is what Stanley Milgram tried to understand through an experiment. His clearly affirmative answer to this question, however, has raised many doubts in other scholars who over time have discovered methodological flaws and publications of partial results. In short, according to the latest analyses, we are not all obedient to this point.
Stanley Milgram’s experiment, conducted in the early 1960s at Yale University, is one of the best known and most discussed studies in social psychology. His goal was to investigate the extent to which people were willing to obey an authority, even when it meant harming someone. Over time, however, the results presented by Milgram have been the subject of strong methodological criticism, in particular those made by the psychologist Gina Perry, who re-examined original materials, interviews and recordings, showing a much more complex reality than that published in the official reports.
Objectives and results of Milgram’s study
Psychologist Stanley Milgram began his study shortly after the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the main organizers of the deportation of Jews during Nazism. Many, listening to the words that the hierarch had pronounced in his defense (“I just followed orders”), they wondered if people could really commit terrible actions simply to obey a legitimate authority. Milgram therefore decided to create a controlled experimental situation that would highlight the dynamics of obedience: to what extent would an individual be willing to go against their conscience to carry out the instructions of an authority?
To find out, the psychologist placed an ad in a local newspaper recruiting volunteers between the ages of 20 and 50, paid $4.50 an hour, to participate in a learning experiment. The subjects who accepted were welcomed by an experimenter who explained to them the dynamics of the study: the effects of punishment on the ability to learn were to be investigated. Through a mock extraction, one participant was assigned the role of “teacher”, while an accomplice of the experimenter played the role of “pupil”. The teacher had to ask a series of mnemonic questions and in case of an error administer, via a current generator, electric shocks of increasing intensity from 15 to 450 volts. The experimenters assure that the shocks could be painful, but not dangerous. Of course the tremors were fake, but the participant was unaware of this. Every time the student made a mistake and received a shock, he emitted moans, complaints, protests and, beyond a certain voltage threshold, he asked to be released because the pain had become unbearable. If the teacher hesitated to use the generator, the experimenter (an authority figure in a lab coat), insisted with standardized phrases such as: “Please continue”, “The experiment requires you to continue”, “You have no choice, you must continue”.
Well, even though the last of these shocks was potentially lethal, about 65% of the participants actually pressed the button for the last shock, just because the experimenter ordered it. Milgram later published the results, showing how a surprisingly high percentage of people were willing to obey authorities even against their own morals.
Gina Perry’s interpretation and criticism of the original experiment
Beginning in the 2000s, Australian psychologist Gina Perry conducted a thorough review of the original materials held in the Yale University archives. His work, published in the book “Behind the Shock Machine”, called into question the original narrative, showing doubts about the conduct of the experiment and its official interpretation.
- Perry argues that Milgram only reported data that emphasized maximal obedience, omitting variants in which participants obeyed much less. In some areas, like Bridgeport, only three people made it to the maximum tremor.
- Many subjects questioned “experimental realism”: only half believed the experiment was real, and of this half two-thirds disobeyed. Those who disobeyed the most tended, paradoxically, to believe that the student was really receiving the shock.
- Perry notes inconsistencies in the procedures: Milgram stated that the experimenter stopped after four verbal prompts, but in reality some people were prompted up to fourteen times.
- On ethics, Perry points out that many participants left Yale believing they had inflicted real shocks, even though Milgram had envisioned “de-hoaxing” procedures. Some even went so far as to check death announcements for two weeks, probably because Milgram did not want to contaminate future recruiting parties.
- Finally, Milgram conducted 23 variations of the experiment, often with results opposite to those reported: in more than half of the cases, the majority of the volunteers disobeyed, some offered to switch roles, others gave lower shocks or emphasized the correct answers to avoid punishment.
Obedience and resistance: what Milgram’s experiment really teaches us
In short, human beings do not obey blindly: most negotiate, resist, doubt. It is true, some social contexts characterized by asymmetric relationships, such as hierarchical professional relationships, group dynamics or situations of emotional dependence, can favor higher levels of conformity to the detriment of personal moral norms. The picture that emerges, however, is more nuanced: obedience to authority exists, but it is less uniform and less automated than what the experimenter highlighted in the study. The most significant contribution of the experiment, however, concerns the methodology and ethics of psychological research, since it led to the development of more rigorous standards for the protection of participants, the need for greater transparency in the presentation of data and the importance of interpreting the evidence critically and cautiously, without considering them a priori as absolute truths.
