Situational Features in Milgram's Experiment That Kept His Participants Shocking

Abstract

Although people are often astonished by the high rates of obedience in Milgram's famous studies, research on social influence processes in other settings provides considerable insight into why so many of Milgram's participants continued to press the shock levers all the way to 450 volts. That research suggests that four situational features Milgram built into his experimental procedure contributed to the high levels of obedience. The four features are the incremental nature of the task, the novelty of the situation and the kind of normative information made available, the opportunity to deny or diffuse responsibility, and the limited opportunity to ponder decisions. When looked at in this light, Milgram's research can be seen as a dramatic example of some well‐documented psychological effects.

“Ordinary Men,” Extraordinary Circumstances: Historians, Social Psychology, and the Holocaust

“…The issue of order is evidently important and is consistent with Milgram's own approach in the experiment (see Burger, 2014), where the situation encouraged assent and routine and discouraged deviation. The experimenter was told to insist on compliance ("Not once we've started.…”

50:50 Hindsight: Appreciating Anew the Contributions of Milgram's Obedience Experiments

“…Unpacking the “contextual ingredients” that promote obedience also reveals some new insights that have consequences for the conclusions that we can (and cannot) draw from the experiments. For example, Haslam and colleagues () show that the experimental prod that is most clearly an order (“you have no choice, you must continue) is also least likely to produce obedience (Burger, ; Reicher, Haslam, & Miller, ). Indeed, as Haslam and colleagues argue, this raises the question of whether these obedience studies are about obedience at all (see also Overy, ).…”

“…As several contributors to this issue have highlighted, theorizing about why people are obedient is the weakest part of Milgram's contribution (Burger, ; Russell, ; see also Blass, ). Even though the final proposed model of obedience in Obedience to Authority book was multifaceted (Miller, ), it is also clear that the theorizing was somewhat piecemeal and that the many different facets of Milgram's explanation are not all compatible (Reicher et al., ).…”

What Makes a Person a Perpetrator? The Intellectual, Moral, and Methodological Arguments for Revisiting Milgram's Research on the Influence of Authority

“…The problems with an "agentic state" explanation become even more acute when we move from explaining Milgram's own findings to explaining instances of atrocity in history (notably the Holocaust; as argued by Burger, 2014, in this special issue). A number of authors (including Milgram himself) have pointed to a series of obvious differences between what happened in the laboratory and what happened in the camps: the former took an hour, the latter developed over years; in the one perpetrators were assured that no harm was being done, in the other perpetrators knew they were committing murder; in the laboratory racism was not a factor, in the camps it obviously was; in Yale people could resist without obvious cost, in Germany protest could have dire consequences (e.g., Blass, 1992;Miller, 1986).…”