The Milgram experiments are some of the most foundational—and controversial—psychology research studies ever conducted. Let’s look at what makes them important.

The original and classic Milgram experiment was described by Stanley Milgram in an academic paper he wrote sixty years ago. Milgram was a young, Harvard-trained social psychologist working at Yale University when he initiated the first in a series of very similar experiments. The experiments were designed to understand how people could be made to obey orders that would involve causing another person considerable pain or even death. Here is the general outline of how the typical Milgram experiment went (Milgram, 1963); for the sake of keeping things interesting, it is written in the second person, as if you, the reader, are participating in the experiment yourself:

You walk into a psychology laboratory where the experimenter greets you, pays you in advance for your participation, and introduces you to another person who is going to be participating in the study at the same time. (You don’t know it, but this person is actually a confederate, or colleague, of the experimenter whose job is to play a certain role in the study.)

The experimenter “randomly” assigns you the role of Teacher and the other participant the role of Learner. Soon you learn what your role means: You are shown a list of word pairs, and your job is to read out the first word in each pair, one at a time, while the Learner repeats back to you the second word in each pair. The experimenter shows you a second room, where the Learner will be strapped into a chair that can provide them with electric shocks. It is your job as the Teacher to pull a lever that delivers those electric shocks and to gradually increase the intensity of the shocks if the Learner performs badly. You notice that the highest amount of voltage you can deliver is 450 volts, which is labeled with “danger—severe shock.”

You return to the first room and sit down in a chair by the shock administration machine. At first the shocks you deliver are so low that they barely register for the Learner, but eventually the Learner starts to complain when you deliver the shocks. You start to grow uneasy, but your orders are clear: increase the voltage each time a mistake is made, then deliver the shock. Eventually you can hear the Learner in the other room howling and begging for the experiment to end. When you tell the experimenter you don’t want to do this anymore, he insists that you continue. As you start to really sweat and feel terrible about what you’re doing, the experimenter keeps telling you how incredibly important it is that you continue with the experiment. Somehow you’ve reached the levels of shock you think must be harmful to the other person, who isn’t even making any noise or responding to prompts anymore. If you’re like most participants in that first study, you make it all the way to the top of the shocks, delivering 450 volts of electricity to the Learner (Milgram, 1963).

Then, shaken and worried sick, you are told that the experiment is over and that it was just a ruse. The Learner reappears, seeming totally fine, and says that no shocks were ever administered; you were just the subject in a research study to see how far people will go in obeying orders when it means harming others. The experimenter thanks you for your time, pays you for your participation, and sends you back out in the world.

How do you feel now, walking out into the streets of New Haven? You feel tricked, angry, a little sick to your stomach. You remember how firm the experimenter was with his commands, how tall and stern he appeared in his lab coat and with his clipboard. You wonder why you got so wrapped up in something that was clearly fake.

Why Is the Milgram Experiment Important?

You might be thinking to yourself, “No way would I actually obey in that situation; I’d definitely walk away.” But fully two-thirds of participants in Milgram’s first shock study ended up delivering the full 450 volts, and all participants made it to 300 volts (Milgram, 1963).

Milgram (1974) saw his experiments as demonstrating the power of authority. People in positions of authority are naturally seen as exercising social control because society affords them special privileges. In fact, Milgram argued that an authority figure can go so far as to define reality for others should they grant that power to the authority figure. In the case of his studies, the experimenter established his authority by wearing a lab coat, showing the participant around and explaining everything, and speaking strongly and firmly when compelling the participant to continue administering shocks.

Milgram’s theory was that when we align ourselves with an authority figure, we give ourselves permission to freely do what the authority tells us to because we have decided the authority figure, and not ourselves, now bears the responsibility for our actions. In support of this notion, when the experimenter used more “we” language (for example, “We must continue the study”), which suggests that they are part of a team, participants were more obedient (Laurens & Ballot, 2021). This abandonment of our moral reasoning opens us up to all sorts of cruel, callous, and irresponsible behaviors (Badhwar, 2009).​

In Sum

Believe it or not, rates of obedience in Milgram’s experiments, and similar experiments conducted by other researchers, have been pretty consistent over the years (Blass, 1999; Grzyb & Dolinski, 2017). It simply does not seem to be very hard to create the conditions in which we will bow to authority and do harm to others. What should we do with this information? Perhaps we should all be generally skeptical of authority and of blindly trusting people who seem like experts, especially if they ask us to do things that go against our moral codes. If nothing else, these studies show us how much power social influences can exert over our behaviors.

References

• Badhwar, N. K. (2009). The Milgram experiments, learned helplessness, and character traits. The Journal of Ethics, 13, 257–289.
• Blass, T. (1999). The Milgram paradigm after 35 years: Some things we now know about obedience to authority. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29(5), 955–978.
• Grzyb, T., & Dolinski, D. (2017). Beliefs about obedience levels in studies conducted within the Milgram paradigm: Better than average effect and comparisons of typical behaviors by residents of various nations. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1632.
• Laurens, S., & Ballot, M. (2021). “We must continue.” The strange appearance of “we” instead of “you” in the prods of the Milgram experiment. Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology, 5(4), 556–563.
• Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371–378.
• Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. Harper-Collins.