Obedience is something that has often been questioned – especially the extent to which a person will obey. Milgram was curious about obedience as it had been an often-used defence in the Nuremburg War Criminal trials following WWII – many said they were just following orders.
In Milgram’s 1963 experiment, he utilised 40 members of the public under the guise of studying the effects of punishment on learning – these members of the public were actually being studied on their willingness to comply with instructions under duress. Each participant met with a confederate posing as another participant, where they were then asked to select either the role of teacher or learner from a hat at random; this draw was rigged to ensure that the study participants were always the teachers. A further confederate of the study, posing as the researcher, would then advise that the teacher would provide the learner with electrical shocks for each wrong answer, the intensity of which would increase as wrong answers increased – from 45 volts up to 450 volts. The teacher was then provided a small shock of 45 volts so that they would understand the feeling given to the learner; this was an uncomfortable feeling but provided no outright pain.
The learner would proceed to eventually get word pairings wrong, resulting in increased levels of shock that would prompt cries of distress (though these cries were pre-recorded) – these cries including the learner begging to be let out and insisting that they had no right to hold him. As the level of shock increased, some participants expressed doubts about continuation – they were prompted by the researcher to continue with one of four statements: “Please continue”, “The experiment requires you to continue”, “It is absolutely essential that you continue”, and “You have no other choice but to continue”. If one prompt was not followed, the next would be read.
All participants went to the 300-volt threshold, and two-thirds of the participants provided the full 450-volt shock. Milgram later repeated this experiment with a situation where the researcher had to step out (supposedly for an emergency) and had another person step into the room in plain-clothes rather than the grey coat (for air of authority) – fewer participants were willing to comply with this person. A further variation of the study included having a second teacher in the room (another person complicit to the study’s true nature) who would continue when prompted; this variation found all participants going to the full 450-volt shock.
In 2013, Gibson looked into Milgram’s original studies to examine interactions between the participants and the researcher in further detail. To do this, he utilised Yale’s archives to find Milgram’s detailed notes regarding the research, which included recordings of the trials in the study. During Milgram’s era, there was more of a focus on quantitative research – that which is statistical and measurable, results that can be used as data – over qualitative research – which focuses on underlying reasoning. In listening to the recordings, he found that the participants who went to the full voltage never heard the final prompt (“You have no other choice to continue”), rather that those who did hear this prompt were even more likely to disobey and reject the order. He also realised that those who did hear the final prompt argued against the fact that they didn’t have a choice; he suggested that the idea of no choice, no authority or free will, would trigger a heightened sense of resistance, especially in the Western world where agency is highly valued. He proposed that when commands are given as a direct order, they were more likely to be rejected as opposed to orders phrased as suggestions, like the other three prompts from the study.