Definition
The Milgram experiment was a psychology study that asked how far ordinary people will go in obeying an authority figure, even when the order goes against their conscience. It showed that you don't have to be a particularly bad person. Anyone can end up obeying dangerously, depending on the situation.
The Orders of a Researcher in a Lab Coat
As a kid, you probably sat still at the doctor's office and did what the doctor said, even when you were scared. We get used to following people in authority from a very young age.
In the 1960s, psychologist Stanley Milgram gathered ordinary volunteers under a false cover story: an experiment on improving learning. Each volunteer played the "teacher." Whenever the "learner" on the other side of a partition got a question wrong, the teacher was told to give an electric shock.
In truth, the learner was an actor hired in advance, and the shocks were fake. The volunteers had no idea. They heard the learner's cries of pain and felt torn. Even so, when a researcher in a gray lab coat firmly urged, "The experiment requires that you continue," many of them hesitated but kept raising the switch.
Astonishingly, 65 percent, well over half of the participants, pushed the shock button all the way to 450 volts, a level that could threaten a life.
Were They Just Bad People?
The volunteers who pushed the button to the end were not cold-hearted villains. They were office workers, teachers, and technicians, the kind of neighbors we meet every day.
During the experiment, they sweated heavily, their hands shook, and they said they felt intense distress. But when the researcher said, "The research team takes full responsibility," they changed. They went from people deciding their own actions to agents who simply carried out orders.
Psychology calls this state the "agentic state." The moment people feel that responsibility for their actions rests with a powerful authority, their personal moral conscience loses its grip, and they focus only on completing the order they were given.
For this reason, the experiment is widely cited as research showing that great evils can be carried out not only by a few psychopaths but also by ordinary people who obey authority. That said, views differ on how to read the results. Some reanalyses found that a good number of participants suspected the shocks were fake, and some interpretations say people went along because they believed in the purpose of the research, not out of simple obedience.
A Bit More Precisely
To be more precise, the participants did not blindly follow the researcher in every situation.
In follow-up studies, obedience dropped sharply when the person giving orders was an ordinary person in everyday clothes instead of a researcher in a lab coat, or when the researcher gave orders only by phone from far away. And when two fellow "teachers" (actually actors) refused one after another, saying "I can't do this anymore," only 10 percent went all the way. Most gained the courage to refuse the order.
In other words, people are not machines that obey evil no matter what. "Situational factors" have a decisive effect on human choices: how legitimate the authority in front of you looks, and whether someone nearby stands up against injustice.
The real lesson of this experiment for us today is to recognize the danger of blind obedience, and to build the critical habit of boldly asking "Why should I do this?" even when an authority makes an unfair demand or gives an unfair order.
Common misconceptions
The participants in the Milgram experiment were sadistic people with personality flaws.
They were completely ordinary citizens. They felt deep guilt and stress the whole time they were giving shocks, but they could not refuse because of the pressure of the situation and the authority.
Where you meet it
You can easily see it in the military or at work, when people can't turn down a boss's unfair order and go along with it.
It is often cited in history to explain the mindset of ordinary civil servants and soldiers who took part diligently in mass killings such as the Holocaust.
In one sentence
Even people who are not especially evil can blindly obey immoral orders when an authority gives the instructions and responsibility seems to lie elsewhere.