First Person Account Of The Milgram Experiment
An article written by one of the test subjects in the Milgram experiments, and his explanation for why it happened the way it did.
He's wrong.
First, if you do not know the experiment (video): a "learner" would be strapped to a chair in the next room-- so they could be heard, but not seen-- and would be asked to remember words from a pair. If he got it wrong, the professor would tell the tester to operate a machine that would remotely administer electric shocks.
In reality, the thing was staged; it was really an experiment to see if the tester would submit to authority: "please continue the shocks."
Most testers continued to shock as long as the professor told them to, even though they could hear the learner howling in horrible pain. Perhaps they thought the scientist had some safeguards from actual death, who knows. But the results show that people are sheep given the right power structure.
This article is by one who refused to continue giving shocks. His reasons for stopping are interesting:
In retrospect, I believe that my upbringing in a socialist-oriented family steeped in a class struggle view of society taught me that authorities would often have a different view of right and wrong than mine.He goes on to detail the origins of a default suspiciousness of authority:
Like all soldiers [in WWII], I was taught to obey orders, but whenever we heard lectures on army regulations, what stayed with me was that we were also told that soldiers had a right to refuse illegal orders (though what constituted illegal was left vague).and his battles with the government:
In the early 1950s, I [the Chairman of the New Haven Communist Party] was harassed and tailed by the FBI, and in 1954, along with other leaders of the Communist Party in Connecticut, I was arrested and tried under the Smith Act on charges of "conspiracy to teach and advocate the overthrow of the government by force and violence." ... I believe these experiences also enabled me to stand up to an authoritative "professor."
Well, okay, but I have a default suspiciousness of communism as well. Here's the thing: none of his reasons explain why he refused to go on with the shocks. These are red herrings-- I'm sure he believes them, but they are simply not applicable here.
Here's why he refused:
...[the professor] insisted that I continue [giving shocks.] I refused, offered to give him back the five dollars, and told him that I believed the experiment to be really about how far I would go, that the learner was an accomplice, and that I was determined not to continue.
He didn't stop because of moral courage; he stopped because he thought he was being played.
The distinction is extremely important. His life experiences allowed him not to be strong against authority, but to be suspicious that authority is an authority. He did not care at all about the other person being shocked-- what he cared about was being manipulated.
And so again, narcissism, though in this "healthy" because it heightened his perception of games and manipulation.
I'm not criticizing this man, how he behaved here has little bearing on how he would act in other circumstances precisely because he thought it wasn't real.
But let's be clear that there is a difference between not playing because you think it's rigged, and playing despite it being rigged, doing the best you can anyway, because that is what life is...
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May 7, 2008 6:37 PM | Posted by : | Reply
OK, that's kind of dumb. The article is titled "Resisting Authority" and the major points are about -- surprise! -- resisting authority, not about empathy. Even so, its obvious that the guy stopped shocking the learner because he was in pain and asked to stop. So the issue of resisting authority only came up at all in the context of being ordered to violate his sense of empathy with the learner.
May 7, 2008 6:45 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I'm no fan of communists, either, but aren't the two explanations reconcilable? His past experiences instilled a suspicion of authority, which caused him to question the researcher's motives, leading him to figure out the nature of the experiment. He then had the gumption to stand up to Milgram.
This makes me wonder, though. Could a significant portion of Milgram's subjects have figured out what was going on, but went along with the charade simply for fear of confrontation?
May 7, 2008 7:40 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I wouldn't put much stock in his recollections of how it actually went down and what his thoughts were after so many years of reconstructive memory maintenance.
Let's take this statement:
"...[the professor] insisted that I continue [giving shocks.] I refused, offered to give him back the five dollars, and told him that I believed the experiment to be really about how far I would go, that the learner was an accomplice, and that I was determined not to continue."
It's quite possible that he neither said nor thought any such thing at the time and that this recollection was constructed after the fact, after learning about how the experiment worked. Really, because of the unreliability of memory, his recollections of how or why he defied the experimenter are of little or no practical value. What could be of more help is film of his interaction with the "professor" including a debriefing immediately after the trial with him was conluded. I presume this doesn't exist.
May 8, 2008 12:42 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Um. The last paragraph doesn't flow naturally from the rest of the post. A Typepad error, or did I miss something? There's usually some transition between your cynicism and romanticism.
May 8, 2008 3:04 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Good point. People HATE getting played. (But love watching Candid Camera.)
May 8, 2008 11:28 AM | Posted by : | Reply
dr. X's post actually meshes with the other experiment where one person was given $10 and told to divide it with a second, unidentified person. If that second person accepted, the participants split the proceeds per the first's scheme. If the second person didn't accept, neither got anything.
The economic analysis says that it's irrational to reject any offer, but that has never sat well with me. In the experiment, if the split went below about $3, the odds of rejection went way up. I think that the reason is that the second person, offered less than $3, expanded their analysis to a point where they realized that the first person was despising the inherent human value of the second person, and rejected as a retaliation.
My point is that, at a certain point, whether rationally or not, humans 'get' that they are being de-humanized, and react. Most people do this unconsciously, or at least un-calculatedly; but most seem to do it. If that's narcissism (and I think this problematizes the basic assertions of TLP a little bit), then it's certainly not unusual, nor, it would seem, inherently negative.
May 8, 2008 12:39 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Alone's response: I run into this problem a lot. I am not judging him as a "narcissist" i.e. I am not saying he is a bad person. Narcissism itself is not negative. Narcissism doesn't mean you think you're better than everyone, it describes the way in which you interpret interactions-- how they impact you. So here, this guy doesn't have an internal obedience to authority not because he thinks he is better than the professor, but because he doesn't recognize authority as anything more than arbitrary.
In this case, the narcissism is healthy. It could prevent you from blindly obeying authority, but in this specific case the power it gave this guy was to "smell" a game: he is so used to interpreting situations as being about him, that he is hypersensitive to situations which are actually about him.
So, to Jim, the man's explanation of communist affiliations as why he resisted authority is only partially right-- it certainly explains why he could have resisted authority, but in this specific case it really explains why he was able to detect the game. Whether or not he actually resists authority is still not tested.
To your second point, if you watch the video, it doesn't lok like anyone knew it was a game. However, if they did, but went on with it anyway, it still supports Milgram's story.
BTW, is it true Milgram and Zimbardo were high school classmates?
May 9, 2008 10:44 AM | Posted by : | Reply
I agree
"But let's be clear that there is a difference between not playing because you think it's rigged, and playing despite it being rigged, doing the best you can anyway, because that is what life is..."
May 10, 2008 12:50 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Thats an interesting question. Does someone have the ability to question unjust authority in all situations? Or would a person only question authority in some situations but not others?
My lefto friends would question police authority but kept themselves in line following their own group norms.
Dunno if this helps. I am vulnerable to my own recollections here. Thirty five years ago, my parents had guests. I found out that one of them had been in Vienna during the Nazi take over, but despite his being Jewish, had escaped.
I asked him how he got out. Too many Viennese Jews had made the mistake of waiting too long, and either ended up in extermination camps or had to take refuge in places that accepted stateless persons, such as China. (This man's wife was from a family that fled from Vienna and sat out the war in Shanghai)
I regret I cannot remember this gentleman's name--for he deserves to be remembered.
Here is what led to his decision to leave Vienna. It followed his refusal to obey Nazi authority.
One day, X was rounded up in a street sweep. The police saw from his ID paper that he was Jewish and took him and all the other Jewish detainees to a large building.
X and other young men were handed clubs. X was ordered to beat an old man to death. It was either that or be killed.
X told us, he held that club, looked this frail man and (this is my recollection) he simply found it unbearable to imagine doing such a thing to another person. He decided he would rather die.
So X told us he put the club down. I dont recall if he told the officer, 'I wont do it.' Maybe he said nothing and just walked away. But...X kept walking and kept walking, expecting any moment to find himself felled by a bullet or club.
He kept on walking and walking....no one stopped him.
X kept moving, left the building. He knew not to return home, and instead managed to find some people with the right connections. Perhaps he had already been in the process of arranging to leave Vienna before his arrest.
In any case, he was on the train that night and managed to reach Portugal, and then somehow made it to the US.
So...he didnt stay and beg for the old man's life, and possibly he didnt even say a word of rebellion to the guy giving the order. But...if I remember X's story, he did say it was some kind of inner pain, inner rebellion that led him to put that club down and refuse to kill another human being.
If you have empathy hard wired into you, then you are more likely to refuse to obey not Authority, but Cruel Authority.
Then it wont matter if the authority is right wing, left wing, etc.
Is this cruelty or not?
Does it make my heart rebel, and give me a feeling of utter, visceral grief imaginging doing such a thing?
I think this is the real question.
The hard thing is today, the orders we are invited to follow are not dramatic, as designed by Milgram, Zimbardo, or the Nazis.
These are orders to commit acts of micro-cruelty, acts of dissociating from the humanity and presence of others. The slow drip drip drip of refusing to pay attention, refusing to feel.
That's the moral hazard of modern life--the lack of clear cut drama and bracketing in the moral choices that actually do confront us.
And I say this as one who flunks this every time I pretend pandhandlers dont exist--and walk on by.
Dissociating from the human condition when I could be present. I think lots of us are doing this and it feels normal.
We need some social psychology done to investigate how many of us succumb to the temptation to dissociate/numb out vs. being present, even when it hurts to be present.
May 29, 2008 2:48 PM | Posted by : | Reply
On choice:
AK's post reminded me of the very first hospital patient I had when I started my psychiatric training as a new immigrant doctor in Israel.
When still a teenager this woman was taken to a Nazi work camp together with her best girl friend. There, next to a chlorine vat, she was ordered one day to either force her friend's head into the vat and drown her, or else have the dogs thrown at her (i.e. the patient).
Her choice of her own life stayed with her as a curse for the rest of her lifetime.
At the time, the only reference I could think of to try and find some logical way to think of this inhuman constellation was that known as the Hegelian "vel". When a robber says "your money or your life", this is a special kind of assymmetrical "or" . If you choose your money you loose both life and money, and if you choose your life you are left with your life without the money. This is not the same life you had before.
On narcissism:
Narcissism is not simply a learned word for egotism. It is a way of calling the set of idiosyncratic, individual conditions that ultimately define for each one life as worth living and livable.
"Playing" is an essential part of life. How far each one is ready and willing to go with it determines how sufferable or insufferable life becomes. As a rule it becomes insufferable for those whose "no-playing" narcissism leads them to demand to be loved, appreciated, valued "for what I am". Believing candidly that "I know who/what I am" is probably the saddest of all possible self-deceptions.
July 22, 2008 1:53 PM | Posted by : | Reply
It may be a bit simplistic to think his reason for stopping was purely because of either his historical distrust of authority OR purely because he was sharp enough to figure out what was really going on.
Isn't it possible he was suspicious of authority, backed out, and simply gave the most obvious explanation possible for his noncompliance? Many people would imagine that they weren't actually torturing someone.
Arg, reading comments now and there is a very similar point made.
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