MILGRAM EXPERIMENT: METHODOLOGY, VARIABLES, RESULTS, CRITIQUES - PSYCHOLOGY - 2025

The Milgram experiment was a set of studies related to obedience to authority figures held at Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram by. Its objective was to measure people's predisposition to obey the orders of an individual with perceived authority even when they conflicted with their own conscience.

Milgram's experiment became very famous because its participants were convinced that they were doing real harm to a person, and yet the vast majority of them decided to continue following the orders given by the experimenter. Because of this, these studies revealed the tendency of human beings to act immorally if we believe that circumstances compel us to do so.

Illustration of Milgram's experiment design. The experimenter (E) convinces the subject ("Teacher" T) to give what he believes to be painful electric shocks to another subject, who is actually an actor ("Apprentice" L). Fred the oyster

Stanley Milgram's goal with his experiment was to discover how it was possible that thousands of seemingly normal people had obeyed the terrible orders of their superiors during the times of Nazi Germany, never having rebelled and completely believing in their own innocence.

Due to the surprising results that Milgram's experiment yielded, it has become one of the most famous in the entire history of psychology, but also one of the most controversial. His studies have been replicated numerous times over the past decades, but the results have always been very similar.

Methodology

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Milgram's experiment was divided into several similar studies, which had some differences in the way they worked and the starting conditions in which the research was carried out. However, they all had a number of main points in common.

For example, in all the experiments there were three types of participants. The first of these was the experimenter, who was usually Milgram himself. He was in charge of the session, and he was the one who gave the instructions to the other members of the studies and decided what to do each moment.

Second was the "apprentice," an actor who was in league with the experimenter and was pretending to be a volunteer from outside the university. Lastly, the "teacher" was a real volunteer, who believed he was helping with a teaching assignment and had no idea that he was participating in research.

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To ensure that the results were reliable, the subject of the experiment (the one who was to act as "teacher") could not know exactly what the study consisted of. To achieve this, both he and the actor arrived at the same time in the research room, and the experimenter told them that they were going to participate in a scientific study on learning and memory.

The goal of the research was supposed to be to understand how punishments helped improve memorization and learning. Thus, both the actor and the participant had to choose a sheet of paper that would determine in which position each of them would have to be. This selection process was rigged, in such a way that the real participant always had to act as a teacher.

Later, the teacher and the apprentice were led into a room, where the latter was tied to a device that looked like an electric chair so that he could not escape. To convince him that what was going to happen was real, the participant was given a small sample electroshock to make him aware of what the learner was supposed to suffer.

Actually, the electric chair wasn't real, and at no point did it hurt the actor; But during the experiment he had to pretend that he was suffering increasingly painful electric shocks. In some versions of the experiment, he even had to shout for mercy and begging for them to stop harming him, since he supposedly had heart problems.

How the experiment works

Once the experiment was prepared, the teacher and the experimenter went to another room from which they could hear the actor but not see him. Afterwards, the teacher received a list of word pairs that he had to teach the learner. If this failed to memorize any of them, the teacher had to press a button that supposedly administered a shock to the actor, this being more and more powerful.

If at any time the teacher indicated that he felt uncomfortable or that he wanted to stop the investigation, the experimenter had to give him a series of verbal instructions in a certain order:

- Please, continue.

- The experiment requires you to continue.

- It is absolutely essential that you continue.

- You have no other choice, you must continue.

If the subject still wanted to stop after the fourth verbal instruction, the experiment was stopped. If not, it ended when the participant had delivered the 450-volt shock (the maximum, a level that was supposed to be fatal) three times in a row.

On the other hand, in certain specific situations the experimenter had to say specific phrases to encourage the participant to continue with the study. For example, if the teacher commented that the actor seemed to want to stop the experiment, the researcher would say the following: 'It doesn't matter if the learner likes this or not, you should continue until all pairs of words have been learned, so Please, continue".

Variables used

In the beginning, Milgram only published the results of one of the variables of his study. However, in 1974 she wrote a book called Obedience to Authority: An Experimental Vision. In it he described 19 different versions of his experiment and the results of each of them. Some of those he mentioned in this work had not been published before.

In some of these variables, the change occurred in terms of the proximity between the participant and the actor. Generally, the closer the teacher was to the apprentice, the more difficult it was for the former to follow the experimenter's orders. For example, in a variant in which the teacher had to personally hold against a shock plate, only 30% of the participants made it to the finish.

Another variable that was measured was the distance between the participant and the experimenter himself. In one version, the subject received the orders by telephone. Here only 21% completed all orders; and some of the participants pretended to continue following the instructions despite having stopped doing so.

In another of the variants, an attempt was also made to measure the differences in the response of men and women to this situation. There was not a big difference between the two sexes, although women showed a higher level of stress when having to hurt another person.

Finally, the effect of conformity to the group on obedience was also verified. In some variants in which other cronies were introduced also acting as teachers, the percentage of people who made it to the end varied depending on the behavior of these new actors.

Thus, for example, when new actors refused to shock the trainee, only a very low percentage of participants agreed to do so. In contrast, in the variant in which the new teachers went all the way, practically 100% of the subjects provided the highest level of shock.

Results

In the original Milgram experiment, 65% of the participants reached the end of the investigation; that is, they delivered a 450-volt shock three times, a level believed to be deadly for the actor. In addition to this, absolutely all of the participants provided shocks of up to 300 volts, a level that is not fatal but dangerous and very painful.

Virtually all of the participants were nervous and uncomfortable doing this, and they showed different signs of stress. Among other things, many of the teachers were sweating, shivering, biting their lips or digging their nails into the skin. Some even had fits of nervous laughter. However, all of them agreed to harm another person just because someone they perceived to have authority ordered to do so.

These results, and those of the rest of the variables that were carried out later, suggest that the vast majority of people would be willing to carry out immoral behaviors or that went against their own values ​​if they were subjected to an external authority. In fact, Milgram himself associated with the results of his experiment the behavior of Nazi generals and soldiers during Hitler's regime.

Criticism of the experiment

Milgram's experiment has gone down in history not only because of the results, but also because of the controversy it generated in the scientific community due to the unorthodox methods he used to carry it out. Many people believed that the study was against all ethics, due to the emotional suffering and stress it generated in the participants.

In addition to this, some critics thought that the situation that arose in the experiment was not extrapolated to what happened in the real world in situations of obedience to authority, due to factors such as the fact that the research was carried out in a university prestigious as Yale was.

Even so, today the results of Milgram's experiment continue to be used to explain the phenomenon of obedience to authority, and it has been replicated in different ways on many occasions.

In the following video you can see a replica of this experiment:

References

1. "The Milgram shock experiment" in: Simply Psychology. Retrieved on: November 27, 2019 from Simply Psychology: simplypsychology.com.
2. "Milgram's Experiments and the Perils of Obedience" in: VeryWell Mind. Retrieved on: November 27, 2019 from VeryWell Mind: verywellmind.com.
3. "Milgram Experiment - Obedience to Authority" in: Explorable. Retrieved on: November 27, 2019 from Explorable: explorable.com.
4. "The Milgram experiment" in: Imarc Research. Retrieved on: November 27, 2019 from Imarc Research: imarcresearch.com.
5. "Milgram experiment" in: Wikipedia. Retrieved on: November 27, 2019 from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org.