Describe the design of the Milgram obedience experiments and some of the controversies surrounding its methods and results.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Milgram recruited community members to participate in his experiment at Yale University. His research was prompted by the ability of Germany’s Nazi regime of the 1930s and 1940s to enlist the participation of ordinary citizens in unconscionable acts of terror and genocide. Milgram set out to identify through laboratory experiments the conditions under which ordinary citizens will be obedient to authority figures’ instructions to inflict pain on others. He operationalized this obedience by asking subjects to deliver electric shocks (fake, of course) to students supposedly learning a memory task.
The experimental procedure had four simple steps: (1) A series of word pairs were read by the research subject, such as blue box, nice day, wild duck, and so on. (2) One of the first words from those pairs and a set of four words, one of which contained the original paired word were then read. For example, “blue: sky ink box lamp” might be read. (3) The “pretend” learner stated the word that he though was paired with the first word read (“blue”). If he gave a correct response, he was complimented and the game continues. If he made a mistake, a switch was flipped on the console. The research subject assumed that this caused the learner to feel a shock on his wrist. (4) After each mistake, the next switch was flipped on the console, progressing from left to right. There was a label corresponding to every fifth mark on the dial, with the first mark labeled slight shock, the fifth mark labeled moderate shock, the tenth strong shock, and so on through very strong shock, intense shock, extreme intensity shock, and danger: severe shock. Subjects were told to increase the shocks over time and many did so, even after the supposed “students,” behind a partition, began to cry out in (simulated) pain. The participants became very tense and some resisted as the shocks increased to the (supposedly) lethal range, but many still complied with the authority in that situation and increased the shocks. Like Zimbardo, Milgram debriefed participants afterward and followed up later to check on their well-being. It seemed that none had suffered long-term harm.