Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority “Relationship” Condition: Some Methodological and Theoretical Implications

Abstract

In May 1962, social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, ran what was arguably the most controversial variation of his Obedience to Authority (OTA) experiments: the Relationship Condition (RC). In the RC, participants were required to bring a friend, with one becoming the teacher and the other the learner. The learners were covertly informed that the experiment was actually exploring whether their friend would obey an experimenter's orders to hurt them. Learners were quickly trained in how to react to the impending "shocks". Only 15 percent of teachers completed the RC. In an article published in 1965, Milgram discussed most of the variations on his baseline experiment, but only named the RC in passing, promising a more detailed account in his forthcoming book. However, his 1974 book failed to mention the RC and it remained unpublished until François Rochat and Andre Modigliani discovered it in Milgram's personal archive in 1997 at Yale University. Their overview of the RC's procedure and results left a number of questions unanswered. For example, what were the etiological origins of the RC? Why did Milgram decide against publishing this experiment? And does the RC have any significant methodological or theoretical implications on the Obedience studies discourse? Based on documents obtained from Milgram's personal archive, the aim of this article is to shed new light on these questions.

Normalizing trust: Participants’ immediately post‐hoc explanations of behaviour in Milgram's ‘obedience’ experiments

“… Milgram ran 40 participants in each condition, with some exceptions: for example, Condition 24 (T and L have pre‐existing family or friend relationship) placed only 20 participants in the T role (Russell, ). According to Haslam, Loughnan et al .…”

The repertoire of resistance: Non‐compliance with directives in Milgram's ‘obedience’ experiments

“…My approach, then, differs markedly from recent work on Milgram: (1) Unlike Burger (2009Burger ( , 2014, Burger, Girgis, and Manning (2011), Haslam (2011), Reicher, Haslam, andSmith (2012), and Russell (2011Russell ( , 2014aRussell ( , 2014b)but like Gibson (2014, p. 425) -I am especially concerned with questions of how concrete and detailed interactional practices for coping in Milgram's laboratory enabled and constrained the two experimental outcomes. However, (2) whereas Gibson's (2014) important analysis of how subjects can explicitly resist the experimenter by rhetorically invoking knowledge includes only the defiant-outcome group (p. 426), mine uses both groups.…”

“…Milgram () and Miller () summarize most of the 24 experimental conditions. More recently, Russell's () archival research has shed new light on the Relationship Condition 24. Haslam, Loughnan, and Perry () and Perry () place the total number of Milgram's subjects in all conditions at 780, that is, somewhat less than what Milgram reported.…”

Questioning authority: new perspectives on Milgram's ‘obedience’ research and its implications for intergroup relations

“…This analysis is also supported by archival and experimental evidence that the degree to which a given experimental variant encourages identification with the Experimenter and his goals (rather than with the Learner) is an extremely good predictor of participants' willingness to continue to 450v [28,33] (see also [49]). For example, relative identification with the Experimenter is low when he is absent from the laboratory or when the Learner is in the same room, or when the Learner is a relative or friend of the Teacher [17,18]. Hence participants prove far less willing to inflict harm in these conditions.…”

“…Some reject his work in its entirety, either on grounds that it is akin to torture [13] [14] or else on grounds that he fundamentally misrepresented his findings [15]. Perry [16], in particular, argues that Milgram failed to report various ways in which participants were 'steered' to obey and that he also suppressed certain variants of his study in which participants failed to obey (see also [17,18]). Others have also shown how a variety of factors that were not reported in the methods sections of Milgram's papers, were critical to the outcomes.…”