The director of the experiment seemed to be a completely normal and even boring man. In our experimental subject the word teacher is written. The experimenter and teacher return to the next room and the experiment begins. Initial errors are punished with light shocks, but as the shock level increases, the teacher begins to hear your complaints, specifically at 75 volts. At 120 volts the student screams saying that the discharges are painful. In one of them it was seen that the further away the student was from the teacher, the higher the obedience index.
Nor was it necessary. To obey, therefore, authority must be considered legitimate. All of these symbols are capable of activating the rule of obedience to authority. Will the teacher give the student the deadly shock that can take his life? According to these people, subordinates are not responsible for their own behavior when they obey orders.
An exciting experience that reveals the interior of the common human being.
The Yale University experiment is a very valuable experience that shows unusual aspects of human nature. We do not know exactly what man is, although an infinite range of doctrines and subjectivities try to explain it.
Still, without much success. This experience reveals the contaminations of the ego of the common man, and also contributes to the understanding of the human personality, to glimpse events in history and everyday reality that affect us, hitherto unexplained and inaccessible
I want to thank the IDB management team and its University Network of Ethics and Social Development, of which I am a part, for their valuable contribution to the dissemination of Dr. Milgram's experience.
Could a normal person come to torture or murder someone just for obeying orders or would we have to conclude that he is a disturbed person? When a psychologist named Stanley Milgram tried to answer this question, he himself was surprised by the results.
When Adolf Eichmann was tried in the late 1960s for crimes against humanity committed during the Nazi regime, the whole world wondered how it was possible for someone to commit such atrocities to millions of innocent people. Many thought that Eichmann had to be a madman or a sadist and that it was not possible that he was like the rest of the normal people who walk with us every day through the streets, sit at the next table in our restaurant or live upstairs in our same building.
However, nothing suggested that Eichmann was different from the others. He seemed to be a completely normal and even boring man. A father of a family who had lived an ordinary life and who claimed to have nothing against the Jews. Every time he was asked about the reason for his behavior, he responded with the same phrase: "he was following orders."
As a result, an American social psychologist named Stanley Milgram began to ask himself questions about obedience to authority and to wonder whether any of us would be capable of torture and murder just by following orders. He thought that the answer to this question would be a resounding no, especially in a country like the United States, where great importance is given to the individuality, autonomy and independence of people, and even more so in the event that orders They will involve hurting someone.
To verify this, he designed an experiment that was carried out in a laboratory at Yale University. The results were so surprising that they not only stunned the scientific community, but also the general public, who became aware of this experiment due to the great attention paid by the media, becoming the most successful experiment. famous within the field of social psychology.
The experiment
Through advertisements in a New Haven, Connecticut newspaper, Milgram selected a group of men of all ages between 25 and 50 who were paid four dollars and a travel allowance for participating in a study on "memory and learning ”.
These people did not know that they were actually going to participate in an investigation about obedience, since such knowledge would have influenced the results of the experiment, preventing the obtaining of reliable data.
When the participant (or experimental subject) arrives at the impressive Yale laboratory, he meets an experimenter (a man in a white coat) and a partner who, like him, was to participate in the research. While the partner appears to be a little nervous, the experimenter is self-confident at all times and explains to both of them that the goal of the experiment is to better understand the relationship between punishment and learning. He tells them that there is very little research that has been done so far and that it is not known how much punishment is necessary for better learning.
One of the two participants would be chosen at random to act as teacher and the other would correspond to the role of student. The teacher's task was to read pairs of words to the student and then the student should be able to remember the second word of the pair after the teacher said the first word. If it failed, the teacher would have to give him an electric shock as a way to reinforce learning.
Both put their hands into a box and take out a folded paper that will determine their roles in the experiment. In our experimental subject the word teacher is written. The three men head to an adjacent room where there is a device very similar to an electric chair.
The student sits on it and the experimenter ties it with straps saying that it is "to prevent excessive movement." Then he places an electrode on his arm using a cream "to prevent burns or blisters from occurring." He claims that the downloads can be extremely painful but will not cause any permanent damage. Before starting, he applies a 45 volt shock to both of them to “test the equipment”, which allows the teacher to check the moderately unpleasant sensation to which the student would be subjected during the first phase of the experiment. There are 30 keys on the machine marked with labels indicating the level of discharge, starting at 15 volts, labeled mild discharge, and increasing from 15 to 15 to 450 volts, the label of which read "Danger: Severe Discharge." Every time the student fails,the teacher will have to apply a download that will start at the lowest level and will progressively increase with each new series of questions.
The experimenter and teacher return to the next room and the experiment begins. The teacher reads the words through a microphone and can listen to the student's responses.
Initial errors are punished with light shocks, but as the shock level increases, the teacher begins to hear your complaints, specifically at 75 volts. At this moment the teacher begins to get nervous but every time he hesitates, the experimenter pushes him to continue. At 120 volts the student screams saying that the discharges are painful. At 135 he howls in pain. At 150 he announces that he refuses to continue. At 180 he screams saying he can't take it. At 270 his scream is agony, and from 300 volts he is raging and no longer answers questions.
The teacher, as well as the other people who play teachers during the experiment, feels increasingly anxious. Many smile nervously, twist their hands, stutter, dig their nails into the flesh, ask to be allowed to leave, and some even offer to take the place of the student. But every time the teacher tries to stop, the experimenter says impassively, "Please continue." If you still hesitate, use the following phrase:
"The experiment requires me to continue." Then: "It is absolutely essential that you continue" and finally: "You have no choice. It must continue. ” If after this sentence they continue to deny, the experiment is suspended.
The results
The data obtained in the experiment exceeded all expectations. Although surveys of students, middle-class adults and psychiatrists had predicted an average maximum discharge of 130 volts and an obedience of 0%, the truth is that 62.5% of the subjects obeyed, reaching 450 volts, even though after 300 the student no longer showed signs of life.
Of course, here it is necessary to add that the student was actually an accomplice of the experimenter who did not receive any discharge. What our naive participant heard was a recording with groans and screams of pain that was the same for the entire experimental group.
Nor was the role of teacher or student randomly assigned, since the word teacher was written on both sheets. However, these people did not know about the deception until the end of the experiment. For them, the anguished screams of pain were real and yet most of them continued to the end.
Logically, the first thing the stunned researchers asked themselves was how these results could have been obtained. Were they all heartless sadists? Their own behavior shows that this was not the case, as everyone was worried and increasingly anxious at the way the situation was taking, and when they learned that they had not really hurt anyone, they sighed with relief. When the experiment was over, many wiped the sweat off their foreheads, shook their heads from side to side as if regretting what had happened, or quickly lit a cigarette. Nor can it be argued that they were not fully aware of the pain of other people, because when at the end of the experiment they were asked how painful they thought the experience had been for the student,the mean response was 13.42 on a scale from 1 (not painful at all) to 14 (extremely painful).
Variations.
For more than two decades, until the early eighties, both Milgram and other researchers carried out various experiments in various countries, introducing variations in some of them to try to elucidate the factors that determine greater or lesser obedience. In one of them it was seen that the further away the student was from the teacher, the higher the obedience index. When the participants did not hear the student's voice, but could only hear their knocks on the wall at 300 volts, obedience was 65%.
When the student was in the same room as the subject, who could see and hear him, obedience was 40%. And when the teacher (adequately "protected") had to press the student's hand against a plate to receive the discharge, 30% reached the maximum level of discharge. In all cases they are high levels, especially considering that the prediction had been zero obedience and that it was about torturing another person.
When the participant receives support from a partner who refuses to continue the experiment, obedience falls to 10%, while if that partner supports the experimenter, obedience rises more than ever: 93% of subjects reach 450 volts.
Many participants even obeyed an "immoral" authority in an investigation in which the victim did not agree unless the experimenter promised to end the study if asked. When the experimenter broke his promise and continued to urge the participant to obey, the obedience rate was 40%.
On the other hand, when the experimenter leaves the room and leaves in charge a person whom the teacher considers his equal, obedience drops to 20%, and is null when two experimenters give opposite orders.
The levels of obedience remain the same even if another experimenter receives the shocks, and when comparing the levels of obedience between men and women, no differences were found between the sexes.
In another experiment, Milgram moved the lab to a less prestigious and impressive location than Yale University: offices in a building in a nearby city. In this case obedience declined, but still nearly half of the teachers followed orders.
It has even been possible for some people to obey an investigator who tells them to reach into a container full of "acid", to throw "acid" at another person, or to touch a "poisonous" snake.
The explanation.
According to Milgram, what happened was that the subjects entered what he called an "agent state", characterized by the fact that the individual sees himself as an executive agent of an authority that he considers legitimate. Although most people consider themselves autonomous, independent, and initiating their actions in many situations, when they enter a hierarchical structure, they can stop looking at themselves that way and place the responsibility for their actions on the person who has the highest rank or power.
Recall that the individuals in the experiment voluntarily agreed to carry it out, although at no time were they told that they would be in a situation where they would have to obey orders. Nor was it necessary. The social structure of the experiment strongly activated a social norm that we have all learned from childhood: "You must obey a legitimate authority", including representatives of university and scientific institutions (or teachers in schools), police, firefighters, officers highest ranking in the military, etc. When the subject freely enters a hierarchical social organization, he accepts, to a greater or lesser extent, that his thinking and actions are regulated by the ideology of his institution.
To obey, therefore, authority must be considered legitimate. In Milgram's experiments the authority figure was easily recognized, as is the case in many real-life situations: scientists and doctors wear white coats, police and firefighters wear uniforms, etc. All of these symbols are capable of activating the rule of obedience to authority.
For this reason, Eichmann continually repeated that he only obeyed orders. He considered himself part of the nonthinking technical apparatus, regardless of the possibility that he could or should control and be responsible for his own behavior. On the other hand, when individuals believe that they, and not authority, are solely responsible for their actions, obedience gives way. However, not everyone responds the same way to authority. Some think that all citizens owe blind obedience to legitimate authority. According to these people, subordinates are not responsible for their own behavior when they obey orders. Others, on the other hand, believe that people are always responsible for their actions and when they find themselves before an authority that gives them orders that go against their own values, they resist obeying.
But these are not the only factors involved in the explanation of the facts. Every time the teacher protested, the experimenter focused his attention on the rule of obedience: "the experiment demands that he continue," "he has no choice," and his calmness in the face of the student's suffering and the teacher's doubts seemed to indicate to him. to the latter that, in that situation, the appropriate conduct was to obey for the good of the experiment, for higher purposes such as science and knowledge.
Still, another social norm that these people had also learned from childhood reminded them that they should not harm others and that we should give them our help when they need it. This dilemma caused them great anxiety because they knew that they were doing nothing to alleviate the suffering of these people. Milgram had succeeded in highlighting the rule of obedience, and the situation prompted teachers to pay less attention to the rule of helping others (or social responsibility). But what happens when we emphasize the norm of social responsibility? As we have seen, the closer the victim is to the individual, as when they had to hold their hand on the plate, the less obedience is. In the same way that the person who spies through a keyhole is ashamed to be discovered,the individual who looks into the victim's eyes while applying the shock, is reflected in it; the consequences of his actions are too evident, the link between action and consequence is palpable and the eyes of his victim are the mirror in which his own face is reflected and makes him more aware of himself and, therefore, of his actions, leading to an increase in your sense of responsibility towards them. This makes the rule of social responsibility more powerful than that of obedience.leading to an increased sense of responsibility to them. This makes the rule of social responsibility more powerful than that of obedience.leading to an increased sense of responsibility to them. This makes the rule of social responsibility more powerful than that of obedience.
For this reason, it is much easier to sign a paper decreeing the death of a person, to drop a bomb from an airplane or to press a button that launches a missile towards a neighboring country, than to torture or kill someone directly. According to some witnesses, Eichmann himself collapsed when he was forced to visit the concentration camps where he had ordered so many people locked up. Probably, a person who considered himself fully responsible for his actions would have been concerned with knowing, at least, what the true destiny of these people would be and what he was really doing with them.
Step by step to torture.
Participants began by applying light shocks of 15 volts, which were nothing more than a simple annoyance. Then a little more, gradually increasing the intensity of the discharge. This sequence also contributed to the subjects being immersed in the obedience trap. In addition, they arrived tricked, without it ever having occurred to them that they would end up doing so much damage to someone. Nor did they imagine that the student would make such a number of errors when doing something so simple (this was also rigged beforehand), nor that the discharges would become so strong. On the other hand, the participants had voluntarily agreed to participate and thus recognized the experimenter as legitimate authority, and the fact that they had obeyed during the early stages might be pushing them to continue to do so.
Blame the victim.
Another psychological mechanism that intervenes (and probably the most worrisome) is to come to think that the victim really deserves what is happening to him. Many of the individuals who reached 450 volts, once the experiment was over, criticized the students saying that they were so stupid that it was well used. Thinking that the victim deserves it, these people feel better, being able to reduce the anxiety caused by the conflict between their wishes to do no harm to anyone and their obedience. On the other hand, the tendency to blame the victim appears in numerous social contexts as a way to protect oneself and that is based on the belief in a just world, where everyone receives what they deserve, whether good or bad. In this way, they may think that they, who are good people,nothing really bad will happen to them. If, on the contrary, the world around us is considered an unfair place, something terrible can happen to anyone, whatever they do, with little chance of controlling it. Hence, there are so many people who, erroneously, want to believe in that hypothetical world where everyone always gets what they deserve. And if it turns out that we who are good, decent people living in a just world have given a person a 450 volt discharge, it was probably because they deserved it. Once the teacher, through this defensive psychological mechanism, has come to underestimate the student, the student has gone from being an innocent victim to becoming someone who deserves abuse.Something terrible can happen to anyone, whatever they do, with little chance of controlling it. Hence, there are so many people who, erroneously, want to believe in that hypothetical world where everyone always gets what they deserve. And if it turns out that we who are good, decent people living in a just world have given a person a 450 volt discharge, it was probably because they deserved it. Once the teacher, through this defensive psychological mechanism, has come to underestimate the student, the student has gone from being an innocent victim to becoming someone who deserves abuse.Something terrible can happen to anyone, whatever they do, with little chance of controlling it. Hence, there are so many people who, erroneously, want to believe in that hypothetical world where everyone always gets what they deserve. And if it turns out that we who are good, decent people living in a just world have given a person a 450 volt discharge, it was probably because they deserved it. Once the teacher, through this defensive psychological mechanism, has come to underestimate the student, the student has gone from being an innocent victim to becoming someone who deserves abuse.And if it turns out that we who are good, decent people living in a just world have given a person a 450 volt discharge, it was probably because they deserved it. Once the teacher, through this defensive psychological mechanism, has come to underestimate the student, the student has gone from being an innocent victim to becoming someone who deserves abuse.And if it turns out that we who are good, decent people living in a just world have given a person a 450 volt discharge, it was probably because they deserved it. Once the teacher, through this defensive psychological mechanism, has come to underestimate the student, the student has gone from being an innocent victim to becoming someone who deserves abuse.
If we return to the Nazi regime again, we find a markedly hierarchical structure where the rule of obedience prevails over all, eliminating the subject's responsibility for his own actions. The uniforms that everyone wore and that made everyone look the same contributed to their not seeing themselves as autonomous and independent individuals, thus reducing their perception of themselves; necessary aspects, as we have seen, for a person to be held responsible for their actions. The psychological discomfort that might appear at first and its tendency to reduce it, the punishment of disobedience (along with the exaltation of obedience and fidelity to the regime) and the racism that existed in Germany even before the arrival of the Nazis in the power,He achieved that a large number of innocent people were considered as increasingly despicable beings and deserving of so many atrocities.
Similarly, Milgram's experiments can help us understand the My Lai massacre, ordered by North American commanders during the Vietnam War, or the torture and disappearances during the Chilean dictatorship. And even excessive obedience to authority could lead to medical errors, because nurses can do something they know will harm a patient simply because the doctor has ordered it. Something similar can also happen on an airplane. In both situations, it is very difficult for both the nurse and the crew member to convince their superior that they are in error, and the person holding the authority does not usually allow their orders to be questioned. According to a review of the data conducted in the United States,25% of airplane accidents may be due to excessive obedience.
But blind obedience does not just lead us to increase the likelihood of committing atrocities or endangering our lives, as the American Psychological Association could well demonstrate in a presentation on research in psychology. In the part of the exhibition dedicated to Milgram, a “demonstration” of the power of obedience was held. The apparatus in which the experimenter seated his accomplices was located at the end of a long corridor whose floor consisted of alternating black and white tiles. Large signs warned visitors, "Please walk on the black tiles ONLY," without giving them any explanation until they reached the end of the hall.
90% of the visitors obeyed and walked the entire hallway walking only on the black tiles.
There is in the human personality the mechanical intention of blindly conforming to what is established.
Knowing it, is already a principle of overcoming to get to know us a little more intimately.
Let this be the task that concerns us today.
