EP 138: The Truth Behind the Milgram Experiment

Hashtag History

This week on Hashtag History, we will be discussing the Milgram Experiment which was a series of psychological experiments conducted by psychologist Stanley Milgram in which he was testing the blind obedience of a participant to an authority figure. These were the experiments where one participant would serve in the role of a “teacher” while the other played a “student”. The teacher would ask the student a question and, if the student got the answer incorrect, the teacher was instructed to administer an electric shock to the student. With each incorrect answer, the shock levels were incrementally increased all the way from 15 volts to 450 (which is a fatal level). When you watch the video footage of these experiments, you can see that many of the “teacher” participants hesitate and even refuse to administer such intense shocks to the innocent “student”. But, shockingly (no pun intended), Milgram would find that - with the right amount of pressure applied to the “teacher” from an authoritative figure - every single participant was willing to go up to 300 volts, and a whopping 65% of the participants were willing to administer the maximum voltage levels of 450!

Milgram, whose Jewish parents had immigrated to the United States during the first World War, was particularly inspired by Nazi Germany and how so many members of the Nazi Party obeyed authority so blindly when they murdered thousands upon thousands of innocent Jews during the Holocaust. As was revealed during the Nuremberg Trials, Nazi leader after Nazi leader professed that they only did what they did because they were following orders from authorities.

The results of this test are pretty disturbing, to say the least. Lucky for us…they may not be true. For one, the device used to inflict electric shock upon innocent participants…wasn’t actually real. And those innocent participants…they were members of Milgram’s own staff. But that’s not even the most surprising revelations about the Milgram study to surface in more recent years. Australian psychologist Gina Perry has reevaluated the experiment and found that much of the raw data does not reflect Milgram’s final conclusion. In fact, that 65% number that we got earlier - the number of participants willing to blindly follow orders - is actually only based on a tiny fraction of those that ultimately participated in the test. Over 700 people took part in the Milgram Experiment, and yet Milgram’s final results derive from 40 of those participants. Additionally, Milgram’s gauge on “obedience” was skewed. Even if a participant refused to inflict electronic shock on the other participant upwards of twenty times before they complied, Milgram documented this as blindly obeying.

The problem with all of this is that Milgram’s Experiment is still so widely known - inaccurately so - and still referred to as factual.

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- Rachel and Leah