Stanley Millgram: Obedience to Authority

we all want to believe that what we do how we behave is purely a function of our personality our character things inside of us our genetic makeup but to what extent are we influenced by the situation by the circumstances by the social context things around us Stanley Milgram perform one of the most important powerful demonstrations of the power of situational forces that transform people to get people to do things they could not imagine doing he and I were classmates at James Monroe High School in the Bronx back in the 1950s and he was concerned being a Jewish kid that the Holocaust could happen again in America that he and his family could be put in a concentration camp then people said don't be stupid Stanley that was Nazi Germany that was then he said how do you know and he was concerned that you know Hitler got young people Hitler young men to to kill he said hey you know would you kill if somebody an authority figure like like Hitler you know challenged you and people say no I wouldn't do that he said have you know unless you were put in the situation so what Stanley Milgram did in his famous series of studies called blind obedience to Authority he took ordinary people a thousand of them 500 from Bridgeport Connecticut 500 from from New Haven Connecticut at Yale where he was teaching and put them in a situation when authority figure encouraged them to keep shocking over and over again a victim but what was critical is the authority figure dress a lab coat was the influence agent the person he was influencing as the teacher was just an ordinary person but the person being shocked the learner the victim was a Confederate the teacher thought he was helping to improve the memory of the student of his student or her student when they ran women but in fact what they had to do was keep delivering more and more painful shocks on a scale that started with 15 volts and ended with 450 and one of the conclusions of this research that I'd like you to take away as all evil begins with 15 volts with a small first step so let's look at how this study was contrived developed and the powerful impact it had on the people in it in 1962 Stanley Milgram shocked the world with his study on obedience to test his theories he invented an electronic box that would become a window into human cruelty in ascending order a row of buttons marked the amount of voltage one person would inflict upon another no rooms original motive for the experiment was to understand the unthinkable how the German people could permit the extermination of the Jews when I learned of incidents such as the massacre of millions of men women and children perpetrated by the Nazis in World War 2 how is it possible I ask myself that ordinary people were courteous and decent in everyday life can act callously in humanely without any limitations of conscience now there are some studies in my discipline social psychology that seem to provide a clue to this question problem I wanted to study was a little different when a little bit further was the issue of authority under what conditions would a person obey Authority who commanded actions that went against conscience these are exactly the questions that I wanted to investigate at Yale University it is May 1962 an experiment is being conducted in the elegant interaction laboratory at Yale University the subjects of 40 males between the ages of 20 and 50 residing in the Greater New Haven area psychologists have developed several theories to explain how people learn one theory is that people learn things correctly whenever they get punished for making a mistake forty years later Milgram's infamous experiment obedience is still taught in classrooms around the world you open those and tell me which flee ginger we're alright now the next thing we'll have to do is set the burner up so that he can get some sort of punishment when inspired Milgram I would say there were a number of factors one of them is he was very ambitious he wanted make a mark in social psychology and he wanted as he wrote to one friend he wanted to come up with the most what the boldest experiment that he could think of would you roll up your right sleeve please ass electrode is connected to the shock generator in the next room and this electrode paste is to provide a good contact to avoid any blister of burn do you have any questions now before we go to the next room about two years ago I was the Veterans Hospital on West Haven and while there they detected a heart condition nothing serious but as long as I'm having these shocks how strong are they how dangerous are they well no although they may be painful they're not dangerous anything else no that's all alright teacher would you take the test and be seated in front of the shock generator please and walls hmm but the experiment was rigged the victim was an accomplice of the experimenter the victim according to plan provided many wrong answers his verbal responses were standardized on tape and each protest was coordinated to a particular voltage level on the shock generator now his teacher you were seated in front of this impressive looking instrument the shock generator it's essential feature is a line of switches that goes from 15 volts to 450 volts in a set of verbal designations that goes from slight shock to moderate shock strong shock very strong shock intense shock extreme intensity shock and finally xxx danger severe shock your job the experimenter explains to you is to teach the learner a simpler word pair test if he gets each answer correctly fun you move on to the next pair but if he makes a mistake you were instructed to give an electric shock starting with 15 volts and you increase the shock one step on each era incorrect you'll now get a shock of 105 volts hardhead just how far can you go in this thing as far as it's necessary I mean as far as is necessary completely Mullen was very much aware that obedience is a necessary ingredient for society to function but he focused on the darker side of obedience and people sad face it's absolutely essential that you continue you have no other choice did you oh my choice my number one choice is that I wouldn't go on if I thought your pink heart now this man makes disobedience seem a very rational and simple deed now other subjects respond quite differently to the experimenters Authority wrong here 75 holes please continue some psychologists were troubled by the ethics of it many if not most subjects found that at highly stressful conflicted experience people are stammering stuttering laughing hysterically inappropriately continue please clearly you know when we say people went to the top of the shock board it was like they were going blithely sadistically people went stop and go stop and go they were in a state of conflict which was created tremendous amount of stress so there was the main critique this will be at 3:30 as his voice began to show increasing frustration so tonight and I was really in a state of real conflict and agitation one of Stanley Logan's basic contributions was that you don't ask people what they would do given this hypothetical situation you put them in the situation ah please continue to honor Navy vote stand I'm not gonna kill out there comport to Milgram one of the things that's a prerequisite for carrying out acts that are evil is to shed responsibility from your shoulders and hand it over to person in charge take the responsibility if anything happens to that gentleman I'm responsible for anything that happens here continue for an excellent slow I didn't hold any gun to anybody's head just the fact that he conveyed a sense of authority roughly 60 65 percent of the people went all the way to the top of the shock board order 50 balls that's it now continue using the last switch on the board please the 450 switch for each wrong answer continually I knocking no answered all demands help me in any way whether the learner likes it or not we might be better than Milgram made the point I think very effectively are that the Nazis were all a bunch of psychopaths at Belsen and Dachau that you could staff a death camp from the little classroom who Haven who was actually pushing the swish I was but he kept insisting I told him no but he said it gotta keep going what kind of obedience with Milgram guest today if he were to do the experiment today probably not the same probably about the same why and I think people are just inherently obedient it just really shows like how far human beings will go to appease what they perceived to be a authority figure Milgram has identified one of the constants one of the universals of social behavior the readiness will be Authority cuts across time it's a constant the other outstanding and distinctive thing about through obedience experiment is how much it has and keeps on permeating contemporary culture and thought it's still with us in very very important ways an experiment you just saw two thirds of all ordinary people who are participants went all the way went to 450 volts when it got to 375 volts the guy was screaming and then there was a thud there was silence and he could be dead or he could be unconscious so if you were doing critical thinking if you were that teacher in that the mock teacher in that study you should have said it doesn't make sense for me to keep shocking how could I be improving his memory if he's unconscious or worse if he's dead but nobody asked that question they were trapped in the power of that situation but I said Milgram ran a thousand percent people this was only one study he actually did 19 different experiments in each one he varied one aspect of the social situation and in some studies he got conformity compliance obedience up to 90% when when when you came in as a participant and you saw somebody like you go all the way and nine out of ten times you went all the way what happens if you come in and see somebody like Yuri bell then nine out of ten times you refuse so it tells us people are powerful social models what about women no different than men their obedience level ISM in the 60s so the Stanley Milgram study is one demonstration of the power of the situation over individuals it doesn't mean personality is not important but in a new situation those social factors in that context can sway us in ways that we don't realize the studies been repeated replicated many times in many different countries with the same effect the majority more than 50 percent can be seduced by those powerful situational forces

Channel: HeroicImaginationTV

Views: 166,623

Keywords: millgram, obedience to authority, power of situation, social influence

Id: y9l_puxcrlM

Length: 12min 47sec (767 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 28 2011