The Horror in Obedience
There are few things that scare me in this world like the Stanley Milgram experiment does. The frightening concept of forcing people to believe that they are hurting others for the nature of an experiment is stomach-turning in itself, but what’s even worse is the results that followed. Above all, I am mostly terrified of what its results tell us about human nature, and how others, myself included, are going to act in a situation of utmost importance.
I first learned of the experiment from my dad, who, like most dads, seems to always know some weird and random interesting fact. After some quick Google-searching, I was sufficiently horrified, as I’m sure most people are upon learning it. After reading Milgram’s book, however, I was even more horrified, as it showed in even more detail how obedience can change a person.
The nature of the experiment is simple enough–Milgram wished to see if people would obey an authority figure even if obeying the figure meant betraying their own beliefs. He organized the experiment by gathering a mostly random group of volunteers and leading them into a room, where he proceeded to introduce them to the Experimenter. The Experimenter was their authority figure–someone in a white coat who looked important–who would be giving them instructions. The volunteer became the Teacher, and another person, who was also in the know about what the experiment really was, would be the Learner.
The Teacher was supposed to ask the Learner a question, and each time the Learner messed up, they were instructed to shock the Learner with some amount of voltage. Each time they answered incorrectly, the Teacher was also supposed to increase the voltage, with the highest being a deadly amount of volts–450 volts–though the volts weren’t actually real, and the Learner would just act as if they were actually being shocked. The point was to create the illusion that the Teacher, who was the volunteer, was hurting someone else, without actually violating any ethics codes, in order to see if the volunteer would obey the Experimenter and shock the Learner.
Before actually attempting the experiment, Milgram asked his students at the university he worked at what they predicted the results would be. His students were definitive–most people would refuse to go on with the experiment and disobey the Experimenter.
In reality, though, they were dead wrong. About sixty-five percent of participants in Milgram’s experiment went all the way up to the deadly 450 volts, shocking the Learner even as the Learner pretended to be hurt from the volts by constantly screaming, writhing, and shouting. Each time they felt even slightly hesitant, one prod from the Experimenter forced them to continue. Something inside of each of them forced them to continue to what they all knew was an extremely deadly voltage.
Some of the worst stories of the participants involve a man who was laughing throughout the entirety of the experiment, and a nurse who very clearly knew that 450 volts would kill someone, shrugged, and continued on. The chilling idea that someone, even someone entirely ordinary, would be willing to hurt, maim, or kill, just because an authority figure asked them to, is terrifying.
After learning of the experiment, I took a look at myself. Would I follow an Experimenter, even if it meant shocking a man to the brink of death? Unfortunately, the evidence doesn’t look good for me, especially coupled with the fact that most human beings, myself included, follow authority figures throughout their entire lives. Our parents are our first authority figures, followed by our teachers at school, then our bosses at work. We are constantly obeying someone at a higher power than us.
I wonder if that makes us more susceptible to things like the Stanley Milgram experiment, or if the whole thing is biological. Psychology always emphasizes the nature vs nurture debate, and whether we are more influenced by our biological side or how we were raised, and this experiment definitely shines a light on that–do we obey others to the point of causing harm to innocents because of something biological, or because people are raised that way? Either way, I caution any reader against obeying blindly–think of your beliefs and values, and guard them fiercely.
In the end, Stanley Milgram summed up his experiment by saying this: “A substantial portion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority.” We do not know whether this is because of a biological cause or a nurturing cause, but this definitely goes to show that we could do terrible, awful things, so long as someone who looks important is telling us to do them.
As I said, there are few things in this world that scare me more than this chilling experiment. Hopefully, there never comes a time where I have to face a choice so deadly and terrifying as this.