(Milgram experiment), also known as Obedience to Authority Study, is a very well-known scientific experiment in social psychology. The concept of experiments first began in 1963 with the article Behavioral Study of Obedience published by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. Discussed in his 1974 book Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. The purpose of this experiment is to test the power of human nature to reject subjects when faced with orders from authorities that violate their conscience.
The experiment began in July 1961, one year after Nazi party member Adolf Eichmann was captured back to Jerusalem, tried and sentenced to death. Milgram designed this experiment to test "Is it possible that Eichmann and the millions of other Nazi followers who participated in the Holocaust simply obeyed the orders of their superiors? Can we call them The murderer of the Holocaust?"
Experimental Method
The experimental team placed advertisements in newspapers and sent many advertising letters to recruit participants to come to Yale University to assist in the experiment. The experimental location was chosen in a basement on the old campus of the university. The basement had two rooms separated by walls. The advertisement stated that the experiment would last approximately one hour, and the reward would be $4.50 (approximately $20 in 2006 dollars). Participants ranged in age from 20 to 50 years old and included various educational backgrounds, from primary school graduates to doctoral degrees. The experimental team told the participant that this was an experiment on "the effectiveness of corporal punishment on learned behavior" and told the participant that he would play the role of a "teacher" to teach another participant in the next room - a "student" , however the student was in fact faked by the experimenter. The experimental team told the participant that he was randomly selected to be a "teacher" and was given an "answer sheet." The experimental team explained to him that the participant next door who was selected as a "student" also received a "question paper". But in fact, both papers are "answer sheets" and all real participants serve as "teachers." "Teacher" and "student" are in different rooms. They cannot see each other, but they can communicate with each other through sound through the wall. One participant was even informed in advance that the participant next door had a heart condition. The "teacher" was given an electric shock controller that allegedly started at 45 volts. The controller was connected to a generator and was told that the controller could shock the "students" next door. The answer sheet obtained by the "teacher" lists some matching words, and the task of the "teacher" is to teach the "student" next door. The teacher will read these word pairs to the students one by one. After reading, the teacher will start the test. For each word pair, four word options will be read out for the students to answer. The students will press the button to point out the correct answer. If the student answers correctly, the teacher will continue to test other words. If the student answers incorrectly, the teacher will give the student an electric shock. Every time the student answers incorrectly, the volts of the electric shock will increase accordingly. Participants will believe that students will receive electric shocks every time they answer incorrectly, but in fact no electric shocks will be given. In the next room, the student pretended by the experimenter turned on the recorder. The recorder played a pre-recorded scream in conjunction with the movement of the generator. As the volts of the electric shock increased, there would be even more amazing screams. When the volts increase to a certain level, the fake student will start banging on the wall, and after hitting the wall a few times, he will start complaining that he has a heart disease. Next, when the volts continue to increase to a certain level, the students will suddenly become silent, stop answering, and stop screaming and other reactions. Voltage "student" reaction
75 V grumbled
120 V screamed in pain
150 V said he wanted to withdraw from the experiment
200 V yelled: “The blood in my veins froze.
”
300 V Refusal to answer questions
More than 330 V Silent
If after four responses, the participant still wants to stop, the experiment will Stop. Otherwise, the experiment continued until the participant applied a maximum punishment current of 450 volts for three times, at which point many participants expressed a desire to pause the experiment to check on the student's condition. Many participants paused when 135 volts was reached and questioned the purpose of the experiment. Some continued after being assured that they were not responsible. Others laughed a little nervously when they heard the students scream. Come out. If the participant wants to stop the experiment, the experimenter will reply to him in the following order: Please continue. This experiment requires you to continue. It is necessary for you to continue. You have no choice. . If the participant still wishes to stop after four responses, the experiment will stop. Otherwise, the experiment will continue until the punishment current applied by the participant is increased to the maximum of 450 volts and lasts three times. Stop.
Experimental Results
Milgram recorded a documentary about the entire experimental process and its results. The documentary is called Obedience. The original copy of the documentary is now difficult to find. A series of five social psychology films inspired by this experiment were produced with Harry From. These films can be found at the Penn State Media Center. Before conducting the experiment, Milgram interviewed his fellow psychologists. Taking a test to predict the results of the experiment, they all believed that only a few people—1 in 10 or even 1%—would be willing to continue punishing them to the maximum volts. In Milgram's first experiment, 100% of people would be punished. Sixty-five out of 40 participants (more than 27 out of 40) achieved the maximum 450-volt punishment—even though they all expressed discomfort; everyone paused and questioned the experiment at a certain point. Some people even said they wanted to return the reward for the experiment. No participant insisted on stopping before reaching 300 volts. Later, Milgram himself and many psychologists around the world performed similar or different experiments, but they all got results. Similar results. In order to confirm this experiment, many experiments with modified structures were produced by Dr. Thomas Blass of the University of Maryland Baltimore County (also the author of Milgram's biography). "The author) obtained the results of meta-analysis after repeated experiments many times. He found that regardless of the time and place of the experiment, a certain proportion of participants in each experiment were willing to apply fatal volts. , between 61% and 66%. Not much is known about what happened at the end of the experiment. According to Philip Zimbardo's recollection, those who did not reach the highest volts did not persist. The experiment itself was supposed to be over, and the "student" was not visited in the next room, and the experimenter's consent was not asked when leaving. In his article "The Dangers of Obedience" (1974), Milgram wrote: Legal and philosophical views on obedience are of great significance, but they say little about what people do when faced with practical situations. What kind of action. I designed this experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would be willing to inflict on another person simply because of an order from a scientist assisting the experiment. When the authority leading the experiment orders a participant to hurt another person, and the participant hears screams of pain, even if the participant suffers such strong moral discomfort, in most cases the authority is still able to continue to order him. Experiments show how willing adults are to obey those in authority, to behave on almost any scale, and we must study and explain this phenomenon as soon as possible.
Evaluation of the experiment
The experiment itself has been questioned about the ethics of scientific experiments, because the experiment exerted extremely strong emotional pressure on the participants (although this pressure can be said to be (caused by their own free operation). Although this experiment brought valuable discoveries about human psychology, many current scientists would regard such experiments as violating experimental ethics. Milgram defended that a subsequent survey found that 84% of the participants said they felt "pleased" or "very happy" to participate in the experiment, and 15% chose a neutral attitude (92% of the participants After doing a follow-up investigation), many of them expressed their gratitude to Milgram afterwards. Moreover, Milgram continued to receive requests from these former participants who wanted to assist him in experiments again, or even join his research team. Six years later (during the height of the Vietnam War), one of the former participants contacted Milgram to express why they felt "pleased" to have participated in the experiment: "When I was conducting the experiment in 1964, even though I Believe that I am hurting someone, but I have absolutely no idea why I am doing it. When people act based on what they believe in and obediently obey those in authority, few realize this... please allow me. I think that I was drafted into the army by the authority, and this will make me do some bad things that even I will be afraid of... If my conscientious objector application to refuse military service is not approved by the authority, I am ready to go to jail for this, which is the only option for my conscience. My only hope is that my fellow conscripts can also use their consciences in this way..." However, the experience of the experiment. There are not life-long changes for everyone involved. Many participants were not informed of the details by modern experimental standards, and exit interviews revealed that many participants still did not appear to understand the true nature of the experiment. The main criticism caused by the experiment is not the ethical controversy of the experimental method, but the significance of the experiment. One participant at Yale University in 1961 wrote in Jewish Currents magazine that when he was about to stop working as a "teacher," he suspected that "the whole experiment may have been designed to test what ordinary Americans would do." Will not follow orders contrary to moral conscience - just like the Germans did during the Nazi period." This was one of the original intentions of the experiment. Milgram said in his book "The Dangers of Obedience": "The problem we face is between the environment we create in the laboratory to make people obey power and the Nazi era we deplore. What kind of connection is there? ”