Stanley Milgram: Biography And Experiment On Obedience To Authority

Stanley Milgram was a controversial social psychologist whose legacy is one of the most important in the field. His controversial experiments on obedience showed the extent to which humans are capable of obeying some kind of authority.

His experiments have been the subject of much criticism for their dubious ethics. In addition, his work opened the debate that contributed to generating the ethical procedures in which this type of research can be carried out today.

Stanley Milgram coined the term ‘agentic state’, a state in which people perform actions contrary to their own values. His research demonstrated the dangerousness of the predisposition that humans have to obey authority to the point of divesting ourselves of our sense of responsibility.

In 1963, the scientific community was enraged by the experiment that Stanley Milgram carried out at Yale University. Milgram had recruited a group of students whom he had instructed to follow the directions of a so-called scientific authority who ordered them to apply electric shocks to other people.

In reality, it was all a pantomime and no one received any electric shock. But the truth is that the subjects who were not part of the plot were dedicated to following the instructions to the letter and applied lethal electric shocks again and again. In some cases, they were discharges of sufficient magnitude to illuminate half of Europe for several days.

To what extent is a person willing to act against their own values ​​by obeying authority? This was the question that Stanley Milgram wanted to answer with his experiments, and his results were most revealing, as well as becoming a scandal for the scientific community.

Early life

He was born in New York in August 1933. Already in his childhood he was a brilliant student and a leadership character was forged from a very young age. One of his high school classmates would be Philip Zimbardo, another extraordinary social psychologist. Stanley Milgram didn’t get into psychology until later; First, he earned a degree in Political Science from Queens College in 1954.

After finishing his studies in politics, he became interested in psychology and obtained a doctorate in psychology from Harvard University under the direction of Gordon Allport. During his postgraduate studies, Stanley Milgram worked alongside Solomon Asch as a research assistant.

It was the time that Asch developed the group conformity experiment on the length of a line. From this moment on, the interest in the study of groups and conformity within the framework of social psychology never left Milgram.

Stanley Milgram’s experiments

Milgram began working at Yale in 1960 and, a year later, began developing his social experiments of obedience. The experiments consisted of a central authority figure ordering participants to administer electric shocks to another person each time they wrongly answered a question.

The person who supposedly received the shocks was an accomplice, but the person who was supposed to punish her did not know. Up to 65% of all participants agreed to administer electric shocks to another person at lethal voltages. And they did it only because the ‘expert’ told them they should.

In 1963, the scandal broke out at Yale and, as a consequence, Milgram was fired and demonized. His alleged lack of ethics had clouded one of the most important social experiments developed in the 20th century.

After leaving Yale, Stanley Milgram headed a new social psychology program at the City University of New York. In 1974, he published his book Obedience to Authority , an obligatory classic that is still studied today in all the psychology faculties of the world.

Stanley Milgram worked at the City University of New York until his death on December 20, 1984.

Contributions to psychology

Stanley Milgram conducted a total of nineteen experiments on obedience to authority. It is true that Milgram always took special care about the participants in his experiments. Despite this,  his research work was harshly criticized for the negative emotional impact it had on the subjects who participated.

Based on its work, the American Psychological Association immersed itself in ethical standards to work with people in experiments, and review boards were created.

Milgram’s research on obedience shocked the academic world for more than a decade. Currently, with the standards that psychological research works, this experiment could never have been performed.

Although replications have been made within the regulations that have supported Milgram’s results on how obedience to authority inhibits individuals from their own conscience and responsibility.

In short, despite the confrontation between ethics, morals and science, the truth is that Milgram’s experiments have served for countless studies and research.

Sometimes the temptation to cross the line of morality to advance in the scientific field is immense. Milgram dared to pierce her, to challenge her and, although her morality continues to be questioned, we cannot doubt the importance of her results.