Milgram's Experiments On Obedience

What influenced Milgram’s studies the most more than Asch was in fact the Holocaust itself, as it held something personal to Milgram. Both of Migram was Jewish, and both of his parents also were Jews who immigrated from Eastern Europe, and they along with Milgram grew up in a Jewish neighborhood which led to Milgram having strong ties to his Jewish culture (Blass 2,9). Because of this the Holocaust left Milgram with a question, and a curiosity about how such an atrocity could happen to his people. Thus, Milgram formed his experiment on obedience in order to comprehend what happened during this time in which millions of Jews perished by the order of a single man and enforced by others in power. Milgram thus combined the knowledge he received

in his studies and the experience he gained while working with Asch, and set forth to design one of the most controversial and shocking experiments ever to have been designed.
Milgram’s experiment on obedience was conducted at Yale from 1961-1963, and though it is considered a questionable study it forced people and psychologist to face just how fragile a persons rationality can cloud their own morality when placed under duress. Milgram began his experiment by soliciting subjects aged from twenty to fifty, from all backgrounds under the guise of a simple memory experiment (Milgram, Obedience 15). By Milgram keeping the true study under wraps he was able to study subjects reactions with minimum bias towards the actual experiment. Milgram told those participating in the faux study that they were to act as teachers and assist in teaching a student a list of paired words. What the subject was unaware of however was that the student was actually in on the true experiment and was trained in order to test their reactions (Milgram, Obedience 16). So it went that whenever the student guessed the word pair wrong the teacher, in this case the subject, was instructed to flip a switch on a panel that they were led to believe would shock the student. They believed the experiment was to reinforce memory through punishment. After every “shock,” the subject was told to increase the intensity from 15 to 450 volts in a sequence of 30 switches they were labeled as the following for the subjects to avoid confusion: Slight Shock, Moderate Shock, Strong Shock, Very Strong Shock, Intense Shock, Extreme Intensity Shock, Danger Severe Shock, and XXX (Milgram, Behavioral). Milgram also was sure to introduce the reality of the situation to each subject by giving each one a sample shock (Milgram, Obedience 20). Milgram surveyed his colleges and students, along with regular people to predict the results of his experiments. The majority believed that almost all the subjects would refuse to obey the experimenter and less than 2% would actually make it to the end (Milgram, Obedience 31). With all his pieces in place Milgram commenced with the experiment.
During the experiment when a subject sought guidance the experimenter would give the following prods:
Prod 1: Please continue, or, Please go on.
Prod 2: The experiment requires that you continue.
Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue.
Prod 4: You have no other choice, you must go on...
Special Prod 2: Whether the learner likes it or not, you must go on until he has learned all the word pairs correctly. So please go on (Milgram, Obedience 21-22).
These simple prods were so the subject would identify the experimenter as someone in control thus influencing the subjects actions without coming across as threatening or intimidating the subject.

The experiments can actually be viewed thank to a documentary called “Obedience”, in this documentary you are able to view how the experiments were carried out and even better the subjects reactions to the experimenter and the student. The subjects reactions ranged from excess sweating, nervous laughter, and even twitches as the subject faced the cries of the student and the cold prodding of the experimenter. The results of the experiments were for lack of a better word shocking. In the first experiment Remote condition testing was used in which the subject could not hear the student-65% of subjects continued to the maximum shock (Milgram, Obedience 94). The 2nd experiment tested Voice-Feedback condition in which the students cries could be heard, but not seen-62.5% made it to the maximum shock potential; in the 3rd experiment they tested Proximity condition in which the student could be heard and was placed only a few feet away from the subject-40% reached maximum shock potential; the 4th and final experiment tested Touch-Proximity condition in which the student not only could be heard and seen, but actually had physical contact with the subject-30% reached maximum shock potential (Milgram, Obedience 95-96). From the above experiments Milgram demonstrated that a negative correlation between authority and proximity of a person being abused. The experiment was conducted in other areas with different subject pools, and they produced similar results, thus illustrating the validity of Milgram’s experiment (Rathus

488).
Milgram’s experiment brought to light the darker side of human nature, and how they apply to situations across cultures and date back throughout generations, it explains how individuals morality can break down in the presence of supposed authority figures and stressful situations. The Holocaust is the perfect real-life example of Milgram’s statistics. Milgram showed that not all Nazis who were responsible for the acts that occurred during the Holocaust were evil and sadistic. Milgram said “The ordinary person who shocked the victim did so out of a sense of obligation...and not from any peculiarly aggressive tendencies. This is, perhaps, the most fundamental lesson of our study: ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process” (Milgram, Obedience 6). Next Milgram showed how people are more readily able to follow out major demands once they have already given into minor ones (Rathus 489). By slowly upping the shock instead of going all out conditioned the subjects into complying with the directions given by the experimenter. Like the Holocaust it was a slow process that built up gradually and ended with the death of 5 million innocents (Blass 277). Milgram then found out what led to the genocide (Rathus 489). In Milgram’s obedience experiments, buffers were used to increase the distance between the students and the subject which lead to an increase in the subjects compliance. The Holocaust used buffers in order to divide the people using negative stereotypes and anti-Semitic propaganda, in order to separate and dehumanize a group of people. In both Milgram's experiment and the Holocaust by cultivating an “us and them” mentality ordinary people were able to undermine their own feelings of responsibility (Newman 15). Thus obedience not a massive group of heartless individuals contributed to the events during the Holocaust, as was shown with fundamental psychology gained by Milgram’s obedience experiments.
Despite what people would like to believe, not much has changed since the Holocaust people obedience to authority still persist. ABC News, in 2007, replicated Milgram’s obedience experiment with the help of experts ranging from university professor to psychologist like Philip Zimabardo. With their help they recreated Milgram’s famous experiment in a modern setting, and, again for lack of a better word, shocking results showed that 70% of the subjects reached the maximum shock potential very similar to the results of Milgram’s original experiment (ABC News; Burger).
Another real life example of Milgram’s findings is that of prisoner abuse scandals. It was only eleven years ago that the media released disturbing news of abuse at an Iraq prison, Abu Ghraib. Not long after photos were leaked of solders grinning with naked, humiliated prisoners. Though eventually actions were taken against the officers who were associated with the public scandal and an apology was issued Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was the commander at Abu Gharib, said they were merely scapegoats for the United States interrogation policies and were simply following the orders of their superiors (MacAskill). In USA Today Pfc. Lynndie England told she “was instructed by persons in higher rank to stand there, hold this leash, look at the camera, and they took [a] picture for PsyOps (psychological operations).” In 2009 a senate investigation was held and it showed a direct connection to the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush aides to direct orders of illegal torture incidents in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay (MacAskill). These “Justice Department memos authoriz[ed] the use of harsh interrogation techniques...such as throwing hooded detainees into walls, ...the use of dogs, nudity, stress positions, [and] sleep deprivation,” methods used at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and other prisons. “Though considered illegal under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), the tactics were put into official use in late 2003” with “Rumsfeld’s approval forwarded from officials at Guantanamo” to Afghanistan and Iraq (White). In an apparent, urgent effort to “find Saddam [and...] the weapons of mass destruction,” Karpinski argues that officials placed “extraordinary pressure...on military intelligence...to get better info” (Barry).