Stanley Milgram (August 15, 1933 – December 20, 1984) was an American social psychologist most notable for his controversial study known as the "Behavioral study of Obedience."
In his study Milgram used a decoy actor on one side of a wall, who was supposedly hooked up to a machine designed to dispense a series of shocks ranging from mild to lethal dosages.
On the other side of the wall there was a volunteer experimenter. This person was designated to read a series of words through a microphone leading to the other side of the wall. The individual supposedly hooked up to the machine was told to repeat what ever the experimenter read to them; the list of words increasing in length as the process went on. With each incorrect repetition of words that person would receive a shock, increasing in voltage with each wrong answer.
The experimenter was able to hear banging on the walls and the shrieks of their victims as the voltage raised to horribly painful volumes. Yet still the experimenter was bound to a signed contract that stated they must continue the experiment all the way to the end. These volunteers were told by the doctor that this experiment was being used to train the brain to increase memory capacity. However the real experiment was to see just how far people would go when given strict instructions from authority. Milgram wanted to see how powerful the conscience was when influenced by higher authority.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Milgram [May24 2010]) In this experiment, 37 out of 40 participants administered the full range of shocks up to 450 volts, the highest obedience rate Milgram found in his whole series. In this variation, the actual subject did not pull the shock lever; instead he only conveyed information to the experimenter, who pulled the lever. Thus, according to Milgram, the subject shifts responsibility to another person and does not blame themself for what happens. This resembles real-life incidents in which people see themselves as merely cogs in a machine, just "doing their job," allowing them to avoid responsibility for the consequences of their actions. The shocks themselves were fake, the participant who took the place as the 'learner' in the experiment was in fact a paid actor who would simulate the effects of the shock depending on the voltage. Milgram became very notorious for this tactic, and his experiment was soon classed as highly unethical as it caused stress to the participants in the study.
This experiment was displayed again reicently in a France documentary, where this experiment was simulated as a game show. According to the documentary, we have certainly not evolved our personal ethics, as almost the exact same result was proven. In my opinion this is a very sad realization to discover about the human race.
Christine Forler
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