Stanley Milgram social psychological experiments. Cultural features of conformity

Experiments on subordination mechanisms. The individual in the networks of society.

Having heard the next message about an explosion in the subway or on the street, horrified by the number of victims of military conflicts, among whom were mostly not soldiers, but civilians, we ask ourselves the question: how did this become possible?! What motivates a person who wears military uniform and taking life ordinary people- women, old people, children? What motivated the people who tortured and sent thousands of victims to gas chambers during World War II? Are all these people villains and sadists? Or “innocent” executors of someone else’s will and orders?

An American psychologist was able to answer these questions Stanley Milgram, who conducted and described a shocking experiment that became one of the most famous in social psychology. Not a single study has given science such an understanding of human nature, not a single one has caused so much controversy. The book contains not only a description of this experiment, but also many others that allow you to look into the darkest corners human soul, to see what each of us is capable of under the pressure of authority, society, and just spectators. This knowledge will give you an understanding of human nature and will allow you to doubt and say “no” when someone wants to make you a “blind instrument” in their hands.

Submission to authority. A scientific view of power and morality

Translator: Yastrebov G.G.

What lengths can a respectable citizen go to when obeying an order?

Reflections on tens of thousands of people in fascist Germany, who sent their own kind to death, simply doing their duty, gave Stanley Milgram the idea of ​​a provocative experiment. The behavior of the subjects during different variations of the experiment invariably confirmed Milgram's dire guesses: some test participants severely “punished” others without using their right to refuse. The paradox is that the virtues we value so much in humans, such as loyalty, discipline and self-sacrifice, bind people to the most inhumane systems of power.

But since the time Nazi camps After death, human nature did not change. That is why the relevance of the concept, which is confirmed with terrible convincingness by experiment, can be disputed, but dangerously underestimated. Milgram's famous experiment, which initially caused protest and mistrust among many, was later recognized as one of the most morally significant studies in psychology.

Experiment in social psychology

The book “An Experiment in Social Psychology” contains the main works of one of the greatest social psychologists, Stanley Milgram, a master of experiment and observation, creator of original methods for studying individual and group behavior.

His experimental study of obedience to authority brought him world fame. He brought new light to the problems of power, subordination and responsibility in his works. His research on the psychology of anonymity and group influence, and cognitive psychology had no less influence on the development of social psychology.

As a social psychologist, I study the world
not to master it
in some practical way,
but then, in order to understand it and report it,
what I understood, the rest.

Stanley Milgram

American psychologist Stanley Milgram did not live long and wrote little. Only last year a collection of his works was published in Russian (Milgram S. Experiment in social psychology. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2000). In the preface to this book, Professor V.N. Druzhinin wrote: “It’s unlikely
S. Milgram needs to be given credit for. His contribution to the development of social psychology, and indeed to universal knowledge about human nature has long been recognized, and he himself is ranked among the most talented experimenters in social psychology of the twentieth century.”
And this assessment is not an exaggeration. Milgram entered the history of science thanks to his striking experiments, which forced psychologists, and simply thinking people to re-evaluate the features of our inner world hidden from a superficial glance, our unconscious attitudes towards ourselves and others. His “star” rose in the turbulent sixties, when many of his colleagues, on the crest of public sentiment, achieved popularity with sugary idle talk. Unlike them, Milgram did not fantasize, but explored. And his discoveries rightfully entered the golden fund of psychological science, serving as an instructive example for new generations of researchers.

THE MOVEMENTS OF A YOUNG MAN

Stanley Milgram was born on August 15, 1933 in the Bronx, an unrespectable area of ​​New York, where poor emigrants from Eastern Europe settled in large numbers (a quarter of a century before this event, another emigrant son was born on one of the neighboring streets, who became a famous psychologist - Abraham Maslow). Stanley was the middle of three children of Samuel and Adele Milgram, who moved to America during the First World War.
He received his secondary education at the James Monroe School, where another future psychologist, the son of Italian emigrants, Philip Zimbardo, studied with him. Nowadays, translations of Milgram and Zimbardo’s books into Russian have been published in one series (“Masters of Psychology”). It is interesting that some of their experiences clearly overlap both in form and content - Zimbardo’s famous “prison experiment” sounds literally in unison with Milgram’s experiments on submission to authority (both experiments have previously been described in detail on the pages of “School Psychologist”) .
After graduating from school, Milgram entered the famous King's College of New York, where he intended to specialize in political science, but quickly became disillusioned with this discipline, since, in his opinion, it did not give due importance to human motivations when analyzing socio-political processes. And it was this subject that aroused Milgram’s particular interest. Therefore, he intended to go to graduate school at Harvard and specialize there in the field of social psychology.
However, he was not accepted because he had not previously received any psychological training. But Milgram showed persistence and over the summer completed six psychological courses at three New York universities. As a result, in the fall of 1954, he was accepted into graduate school at Harvard.

CULTURAL FEATURES OF CONFORMITY

It was here that Milgram met a man who would become his greatest scientific authority and role model throughout his life. This was Solomon Asch, who became famous for his studies of the phenomenon of conformity.
In 1955–1956, Asch taught at Harvard as a visiting lecturer, and Milgram was his assistant both in educational process, and in research activities. Among his teachers were other now world-famous psychologists - G. Allport and J. Bruner, who also had a great influence on him.
Milgram's dissertation research was formally supervised by Allport, but in fact the work was carried out under the influence of S. Asch's theory of conformity. Milgram carried out a comparative analysis of the degree of conformity using two national samples - French and Norwegian.
For this purpose, he modified the Asch technique. Instead of assessing the length of segments, presented, of course, visually and in the presence of dummy participants in the experiment, Milgram used an audio test in which subjects were required to indicate which of the pairs of tones in the presented series was longer. The disorienting reaction of the “participants” was also received through headphones - the subject constantly heard the unanimous reaction of the mistaken majority and was forced to make a decision: either join the majority (show conformity), or insist on his own answer.
The technique in this modification was tested at Harvard in the summer of 1957. Then, during the 1957/58 academic year, experiments were carried out at the Institute for Social Research in Oslo, and in the 1958/59 academic year at the Sorbonne.
In experiments on the Norwegian sample, more than high level conformity, which made it possible to put forward a hypothesis about the relationship of this socio-psychological characteristic with national and cultural characteristics. It is likely that in the more compact and homogeneous Norwegian society the tendencies towards conformist reactions are stronger than in French society with its traditional differences of opinion.
(It is characteristic that a more or less widespread testing of the methodology on a Russian sample was never carried out. I wonder what would be revealed here local peculiarities? However, it is not difficult to guess. Although for the sake of scientific correctness it would be necessary to check.)
One way or another, this was a very important study, since it was the first time that the question of national differences in behavior was transferred from the realm of everyday hypotheses and fables to the field of systematic and controlled observations of behavior.

DEGREE OF SUBMISSION

After returning to the United States, Milgram followed Asch to a position at Princeton. Here he continued to assist the master and even took part in editing a book about the problems of conformity, which Asch wrote in those years, but which was never published.
Despite the fact that Milgram always considered Asch his intellectual mentor, their personal relationship developed rather formally, without the trust and ease that Milgram managed to achieve in communicating with other colleagues, including senior ones. He spent a year at Princeton alone, indulging in long thoughts about the prospects of his research. As a result of these thoughts, he developed a model of the experiment, which found brilliant implementation a year later, when he moved to Yale and began completely independent work.
In these experiments the task was set to find out to what extent subordination can reach ordinary people under pressure from authority. Milgram was able to create a laboratory situation that turned out to be very effective for studying the ability to obey.
The essence of the experiment was that the subject, who played the role of the experimenter's assistant, received an order that was contrary to elementary humanity, and could either obey or express protest and refuse to participate in the inhumane experiment. The order was to use strong electric shocks (up to 450 volts) to reinforce failures in solving problems by dummy subjects.
The latter was played by a professional actor (who, of course, did not actually receive electric shocks), who demonstrated suffering from pain and begged to be released. However, despite the obvious suffering innocent victim and even a clear danger to her life, about 2/3 of the real subjects (“assistants”) followed the lead of the authoritarian experimental scientist and did not dare to stop the torture (see diagram).

The first results of this study were published in 1963 in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology and immediately caused lively controversy. In particular, opponents voiced complaints about the ethical side of the experiment. The fact that the experimental situation was rigged and the real subject was deliberately misled did not raise any special objections - this is a common practice for social-psychological experiments.
However, it was obvious that the experiment could entail Negative consequences for the self-esteem of the subject, to deprive him peace of mind- who likes to realize that he turned out to be a puppet in the hands of manipulators, and even played the unsightly role of an executioner?
In Milgram's opinion, the whole ethical controversy had been blown out of proportion. He wrote: “The point is that, in terms of impact on self-esteem, the consequences for the subjects in this experiment are even less than for students taking regular exams. For some reason, when testing a person’s knowledge, we are quite prepared for the manifestation of tension, as well as negative consequences for self-esteem in the event of failure or even just a low grade. But how intolerant we become when it comes to generating new ideas and knowledge!”
Nevertheless, the ethical ambiguity of the experiment caused wary attitude to Milgram in official scientific circles, and his application for admission to the American Psychological Association was initially even rejected (he became a member of the APA only in 1970)

LOST LETTER

Milgram's scientific career developed in the usual tradition for Western scientists - for most of them, a permanent position is the ultimate dream, but in reality they have to travel from scientific institution to contract. After his contract at Yale expired, he returned to Harvard, where he was offered a new three-year contract (his annual salary was $8,600 - even by the standards of the sixties, a rather modest amount, so stories about the prosperity of overseas colleagues, both before and now, are more likely to be myths).
At Harvard, Milgram focused his attention on two areas of research. One was a continuation of a project begun at Yale, the other was completely new.
While still at Yale, Milgram, along with his graduate students Leon Mann and Susan Harter, came up with the “lost letter method” to be able to unobtrusively gauge the sentiments of the local community.
Like many of Milgram's projects, the lost letter method poses a dilemma. There is a common belief - you can even call it a norm - that if you accidentally find a letter dropped by someone, you should put it in the mailbox. What if the letter is addressed to a subversive organization pursuing anti-democratic and inhumane goals that a responsible citizen cannot share? After all, if he sends a letter, he will thereby provide indirect support to this organization.
During the first testing of this method at Yale on sidewalks, approx. telephone booths, 400 letters were “lost” in shops and student dormitories. Hundreds each were addressed to supporters of the Nazi and communist parties, a hundred were allegedly sent to the scientific staff of the medical college, a hundred to an unknown private individual, a certain Mr. Walter Carnap. Milgram found that of letters addressed to reds and browns, less than a quarter were sent, while over 70% of letters addressed to scientists and individuals were dropped off in the mailbox. Subsequently, this technique found wide application for analyzing public sentiment.

FLUCTUATIONS OF RESPONSIBILITY

Harvard's campus was architecturally very different from Yale's. This gave Milgram the idea to collate the data on the sending of the lost letter from the dormitories various kinds. In one town, there were two types of buildings: 22-story towers that could accommodate up to 500 people, and small 4-5-story buildings that could accommodate 165 students. The other campus consisted of 2-4 story dormitories housing an average of 58 students.
Researchers led by Milgram wanted to determine the level of mutual aid in different types of housing. To do this, they used the previously tested lost letter technique. Scattered around crowded areas of the dormitories were sealed envelopes containing the usual thank-you letter, which contained a stamp and address of the recipient, but no details of the sender. It was necessary to determine what proportion of “lost” envelopes would be sent by mail to students from different dormitories who found them.
One would expect that than more people will pass by the letter, the higher the likelihood that it will be noticed and dropped into the mailbox. In fact, everything turned out to be the opposite. It found that only 63% of letters left in high-density residence halls were sent by mail; in dormitories with medium density the proportion of such letters was 87%, and in low-density dormitories it was 100%. Similar experiments subsequently carried out at other universities gave very similar results.
In order to find out what caused this state of affairs, questionnaires were sent to students living in different dormitories. The responses received confirmed that those who lived in “high population density” conditions had a much weaker sense of collective responsibility. This, in part, could be explained by the greater sense of loneliness and “anonymity” that most of them experienced.
What then can we say about ourselves? educational institutions, where thousands of students circulate between buildings, moving from one crowded classroom to another? Perhaps the shifts in youth behavior observed in recent decades are partly related to such living conditions...

HOW SMALL IS THE WORLD?

A brand new study that Milgram began at Harvard used the small-world method to answer the question: “If you take two strangers at random, how many connections through mutual acquaintances would it take for them to meet?” The question is actually quite interesting. "It's a small world!" - we sometimes exclaim when we discover that we have mutual acquaintances, say, with a random fellow traveler on the train. But how tight is it? Stanley Milgram decided to find out.
From telephone directories He selected a number of addresses at random from several cities and sent each addressee an envelope with brief information about another, equally randomly selected American. The letter contained his last name, characteristic external features and brief biographical information.
The probability that the person receiving the letter personally knew the person described in it was one in two hundred thousand. Milgram asked the recipient, if he knew the person described in the letter, to return the letter to the experimenter, and if he did not know, to forward it to someone he knew who might know such a person. If the next recipient in the chain also did not know the specified person, he had to transfer the letter to another acquaintance under the same conditions. The number of such transmissions can serve as an indicator of the distance separating two completely randomly selected people in a large country.
Based mathematical probability, one might assume that the letters sent by Milgram are still wandering unsuccessfully across the expanses of America. However, in reality the chain of communication turned out to be surprisingly short. The vast majority of connections were in the range from 2 to 10 transmissions, and on average there were five. The world really is quite a small place!

CONTRADICTORY ATTITUDE

As Milgram and his activities at Harvard became increasingly known to academic circles and the general public through his journal and newspaper publications (the researcher never disdained popularizing his research), increasingly lively discussions began to flare up around his name.
Invitations to seminars and colloquiums poured in, his journal articles were reprinted in dozens of anthologies, and priests in their sermons cited moral lessons gleaned from his works.
For a number of years the most different people wrote to him, asking about the details of the experiments, and sometimes sharing, quite frankly, their personal experiences. For example, one person wrote that he had read about the obedience experiments and found them interesting but somewhat artificial. The author of the letter himself in his professional activities dealt with real victims: his duties included turning off the electricity of malicious defaulters, despite even the severe cold outside the window.
The psychologist willingly answered his correspondents, but this personal correspondence, of course, remained unpublished. It's a pity! It's interesting that he responded to that letter...
At Harvard, Milgram experienced one of the greatest disappointments of his life. Already an eminent scientist, he hoped to finally be awarded a permanent position, and such a possibility was actually considered by the university administration. However, his candidacy was rejected. It seemed that some people associated the image of Milgram directly with his experiments and unconsciously considered him to be a crazy, sadistic scientist from whom it was better to stay away.
Offended by this attitude, Milgram left Harvard. New contracts were offered to him by Cornell University and the University of California at Berkeley, but he chose a less prestigious option and signed a contract with the City University of New York (CUNY). This choice was dictated by a number of material and everyday considerations, and Milgram himself considered it temporary, hoping to subsequently settle in a more reputable institution. In fact, the university exceeded all his expectations, and he worked there for 17 years until his death.

PSYCHOLOGY OF A BIG CITY

Milgram has long been interested in the peculiarities of the psychology of residents big cities. Back in 1964, in co-authorship with his friend, sociologist Paul Hollander, he wrote an analytical article initiated by the brutal murder of a young waitress Kitty Genovese on a New York street in the presence of dozens of indifferent witnesses ( psychological analysis This incident is the subject of a publication in “School Psychologist”, No. 10, 2001).
Milgram began regularly holding seminars on urban science and, together with his students, undertook a number of original studies of the behavior of metropolitan residents. One of these experiments was surprisingly simple, but at the same time extremely revealing.
Milgram's laboratory window overlooked crowded 42nd Street in New York. The experiment was organized as follows: various numbers of pedestrians (these were participants in the experiment - students instructed by Milgram) stopped on the street and began to look at the seventh floor window. Outside the window, Milgram filmed the crowd. He systematically varied the number of participants and measured the size of the crowd that gathered to join the onlookers.
When only one participant in the experiment was looking at the window, 45% of passers-by stopped next to him and also raised their heads; when the number of participants reached fifteen, 85% of pedestrians stopped. It was a different type social impact, than previously studied, is not obedience, but rather infection.
One way or another, the experiment convincingly demonstrated: if the number of sources of influence increases, then the strength of their influence increases. Similar experiments were subsequently repeated in various modifications by many researchers in order to study the mechanisms of social influence.
At the APA annual convention in 1969, Milgram gave a talk, “The Experience of Living in Big Cities: A Psychological Analysis.” A transcript of the report a year later appeared in popular magazine Science (by the early eighties, this article was recognized as a classic by the citation index and was included in more than 50 anthologies). Documentary director Harry From accidentally became acquainted with it, who suggested that Milgram create a film based on the article.
The result was the 1972 documentary The City and the Individual, which won several prestigious film awards and even enjoyed considerable commercial success, something that rarely happens with documentaries. Filmmaking captivated Milgram, and he and Frome produced four more films on social psychology.

In general, it should be noted that he was an extremely gifted and versatile person - he not only planned and carried out original experiments, but also wrote songs (they were enthusiastically sung by students of the sixties, interspersed with songs by Dylan and Morrison), invented Board games, and also tried himself in literary creativity.
IN last years throughout his life he suffered from heart disease. He died suddenly at the age of 51 from a heart attack. The songs he wrote are rarely remembered today only by his former students. And his Scientific research inspire new discoveries among psychologists around the world.

The Milgram Experiment is a social experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram in 1963. This psychologist studied at Yale University. This experiment received wide publicity and popularity in both scientific and social circles.

Some scientists called this experience one of the most cruel in psychology. The participants in the experiment were given the task of awakening sadistic tendencies in themselves by deliberately causing pain and suffering in relation to other people.

Today you will learn the details of Milgram's experiment.

Who is Stanley Milgram

Stanley Milgram was born in New York on August 15, 1933. Elementary education he received it at the James Monroe School, studying in the same class with another famous future psychologist, Philip Zimbardo.

After graduating from this educational institution, Milgram entered King's College in New York to study political science. However, it soon becomes clear to him that this scientific field does not excite him. special interest. And yet he manages to complete his studies.

During his studies, Stanley was seriously interested in the specialty “social psychology”. He even wanted to go to Harvard, but he was unable to do so due to a lack of relevant knowledge.

However, this did not stop Milgram, and in one summer he was able to take 6 courses in social psychology at 3 different higher education institutions. As a result of this, in 1954 he entered Harvard.

IN student years Stanley got into trouble a good relationship with a lecturer named Solomon Asch, who became a popular psychologist through his study of the phenomenon of conformity. Milgram even acted as an assistant during his research and experiments.

When Milgram finished studying, he returned back to the USA. There Stanley began working at Princeton, along with Solomon Asch. It is important to note that there were no friendly relations between these scientists. They were interested in each other exclusively in scientific field. A year later, Milgram wanted to continue working in the field of psychology, but separately from Asch.

The essence of the Milgram experiment

During his famous experiment Stanley Milgram wanted to know how much suffering some people could inflict on others if it was part of their job responsibilities. At the very beginning he thought of going to Germany, because he assumed that German people more prone to submission.

This was due to the recent Nazi regime, which showed the world all the horrors of such government. But when he carried out his first experiments in the state of Connecticut, it turned out that there was no point in going anywhere, and he could safely continue his work in his homeland, since people were the same everywhere.

In the context of what has been said, one cannot help but recall another famous one. Be sure to read about it - it's very interesting.

Briefly about the Milgram experiment

The results of Milgram's experiment clearly showed that people are unable to resist their authoritative leadership when it orders them to torture others, even innocent people. It turned out that a person is ready to unquestioningly obey the highest authorities, carrying out any of his orders, even if they go against his life principles.

In addition to the USA, this experiment was also carried out in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Jordan and Austria. The final results of the experiment proved that, regardless of nationality, the participants in the experiment deliberately caused pain to other people if their superiors required it.

Description of the Milgram experiment

The experiment, called Obedience, took place in the basement of Yale University. More than 1000 people of different genders and ages participated in this experiment. Initially, a person was offered a wide range of actions that went against his principles and moral standards.

The main question or goal of the Milgram experiment was this: how far can a person go in causing pain to another before obeying a leader becomes contradictory for him?

To the subjects, the meaning of this experiment was explained in a completely different light: they were told that the purpose of the experiment was to study the influence of bodily pain on the functions of human memory. IN this study The participants were a mentor (experimenter), a subject (student) and a dummy actor (in the role of the second student).

According to the rules, the student was required to learn long list different paired words, and the teacher had to check how well and accurately the student remembered these phrases.

If a student made a mistake, the teacher had to shock him. With each new mistake, the teacher missed again electric charge, which increased every time.

How Stanley Milgram's experiment was carried out

Before starting Milgram's experiment, Stanley made the drawing of lots shown as to which of the two candidates would be the student and which the teacher. In this case, the teacher, of course, always became the subject.

The actor playing the role of the student sat on a chair with “electrical wires” connected to it. Before the experiment began, both students were given a 45-volt electric shock. This was done so that an unsuspecting participant in the experiment could feel the pain that the student would experience.

Next, the teacher went into the next room and began dictating words to the student. When he made a mistake, the teacher immediately pressed the button, shocking the unfortunate man with an electric shock. According to the rules, each subsequent electrical discharge increased by 15 Volts, and the maximum voltage reached as much as 450 Volts.

As stated at the beginning, the student was a fake actor who only pretended to be really shocked by electricity. The testing system was specially configured so that the student answered correctly 1 time, and after that errors occurred 3 times in a row.

Therefore, when the teacher read to the end all the pairs of phrases written on the first sheet, the electric shocks reached a voltage of 105 Volts. However, when the subject wanted to continue reading the words, moving on to the next sheet, the experimenter forced him to start over, reducing the electric shock to 15 volts.

This was done so that the subject understood that the experiment would not end until all pairs of words were correctly pronounced by the student.

Submission to authority in the Milgram experiment

When a student was “hit” by a shock of 105 volts, he demanded that the bullying stop, which caused the teacher to experience stress and remorse. But after the experimenter calmed the subject (the dummy actor), assuring him that everything was under control and that he should continue to act, the teacher obeyed him.

The culmination of the Milgram experiment

During the experiment, the experimenter assured the subject that he took full responsibility for the life of the student and for the final course of the experiment. That he should not stop and continue further, although no one threatened the teacher or promised any reward.

With each successive discharge, the actor screamed more and more horribly and begged his teacher to stop. And when the subject began to doubt the correctness of his actions, the experimenter again assured him that everything was going according to plan and that he should not stop.

Surprisingly, in the end, each of Milgram's experiments was completed. Final results This experience stunned absolutely everyone.

Stunning results

As a result of one of the experiments, it was recorded that 26 out of 40 test subjects did not show any pity for the student and brought the torture to a “deadly” electric discharge of 450 Volts.

Only after a three-time shock with a voltage of 450 volts did the experimenter announce that the experiment was over. The majority of teachers gave their students such electrical discharges who would be in real life led to death.

When the public learned about the results of Milgram's experiment, they were simply dismayed by them. An interesting fact is that the subjects themselves were also shocked by their own actions.

Full information about the experiment

More detailed information You can read about this experiment in Stanley Milgram's book entitled "Obeying Authority: An Experimental Study." This information will be of interest to both psychologists and ordinary people.

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Last update: 08/12/2018

The dangers of obedience - that's what Stanley Milgram called his experiment. And obedience to authority can be very dangerous indeed, since sometimes it goes against even universal human values.

"The social psychology of this century shows us main lesson“Often a person’s actions are determined not by his characteristics, but by the situation in which he finds himself” - Stanley Milgram, 1974

If a person in authority ordered you to defeat another person electric shock with a power of 400 volts, would you agree to this? Most people will answer such a question with an adamant “no.” But Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of studies in the 1960s experimental research obedience that showed amazing results.

Background to the Milgram experiment

Milgram began conducting his experiments in 1961, shortly after the trial of World War II criminal Adolf Eichmann began. “How could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were simply carrying out tasks? Were they all accomplices? - Milgram posed this question in his report “Obedience to Authority.”

Milgram experiment technique

The participants in the experiment were forty men who were recruited from newspaper advertisements. They were each offered a payment of $4.50.
Milgram developed a very realistic and frightening-looking generator equipped with 15 V division buttons. The voltage started at 30 V and ended at 450 V. Most of the switches were labeled “minor shock,” “moderate shock,” and “danger: severe shock.” The final couple of buttons were simply labeled with the ominous “XXX.”

The participants were divided by “lot” into “teachers” and “students”; during the experiment they were separated by a wall. The “teacher” had to shock the “student” every time he said an incorrect answer. While the participant assumed that he was actually shocking the “student,” no shocks actually occurred, and the “student” was actually an ally of the experiment, feigning shock.

During the experiment, the participant heard the “student’s” pleas for mercy, requests to be released, and complaints about diseased heart. As soon as the current level reached 300 volts, the “student” desperately banged on the wall and demanded release. After which he became quiet and stopped answering questions. The experimenter then instructed the participant to treat this silence as an incorrect response and press the next button to receive the shock.

Most of the participants asked the experimenter if they should continue? But the experimenter gave them a series of commands requiring action:

• "Please continue";
• “The experiment requires you to continue”;
• “It is absolutely necessary that you continue”;
• “You have no other choice, you must continue.”

Results of Milgram's experiment

Level electrical voltage, which the participant was willing to deliver, was used as a measure of obedience.
How far do you think most of the participants went?

When Milgram posed this question to a group of Yale students, they guessed that no more than three out of a hundred participants would give the maximum shock. In fact, 65% of participants gave the maximum.

Of the 40 participants in the experiment, 26 delivered the maximum shock level, and only 14 stopped before. It is important to note that many subjects became extremely anxious, agitated, and angry with the experimenter. Milgram later clarified that 84% were happy about their participation, and only 1% regretted participating in the experiment.

Discussion of the Milgram experiment

While Milgram's research raised serious questions about the ethics of using human subjects in this type of psychological experiment, its results remained consistent throughout subsequent research. Thomas Blass (1999) continued with similar experiments and found that Milgram's results persisted.

Why did most participants perform sadistic acts according to authoritative instructions? According to Milgram, there are many situational factors that may explain this high level of obedience:

• the physical presence of an authority figure dramatically increased compliance;
• the fact that the study was conducted by Yale University, a reputable educational institution, led the majority of participants to believe that the experiment should be safe;
• the choice of teacher and student status seemed random;
• participants assumed that the experimenter was a competent expert;
• Participants were assured that electric shocks were painful but not dangerous.

Milgram's later experiments indicated that the presence of resistant participants dramatically increased levels of obedience. When other people refused to comply with the experimenter's orders, 36 of 40 participants refused to go to the maximum current level.

“Ordinary people, simply doing their job, and without much hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become clear, but they are asked to continue actions that are inconsistent with fundamental standards of ethics, few people find the strength to resist authority” (Milgram, 1974).

Milgram's experiment became a classic in psychology, demonstrating the dangers of obedience. While this experiment assumed that situational variables had more strong influence than personality factors in determining obedience, other psychologists argue that obedience occurs in to a greater extent under the influence of a combination of external and internal factors, such as personal beliefs and character traits.

Watch the video of Stanley Milgram's experiment “Obedience.”

Have something to say? Leave a comment!.

Stanley Milgram conducted a large number of interesting and masterly experiments. The goal of his research was to identify the mechanisms of compliance with social residual norms, that is, the rules governing the daily activities of a person. Such norms are determined by two criteria: 1) the majority of people agree with them and automatically fulfill them; 2) these norms remain invisible until they are violated. Experimenters provoked people to violate residual norms.

Milgram's first experiment took place on the New York subway. One of the rules of behavior in the metro is based on the principle “whoever has time, gets on.” Another rule is to refrain from talking to each other. The experimenter's assistants were psychology students. The subjects are metro passengers. Milram's assistants in the subway car addressed the seated subject with the words: “Excuse me, would you give me your seat?” As observations showed, 68.3% of the subjects gave up their seats. Milgram interprets this behavior as a violation of residual rules. Experimenters have identified social compliance - people do not seek to defend residual norms (112, pp. 55-61).

Milgram's second experiment was aimed at studying the reaction to queue intrusion. He distinguishes between two types of queue. The first is an orderly queue (making an appointment with a doctor, issuing numbers). The second is a disorderly, spontaneous queue. Spontaneous queueing is a phenomenon social order, which obeys general socio-psychological laws. The queue represents classic example how people create social order based on the elementary principle of justice. Milgram studied the reactions of those standing in line to violators of order and justice. He describes three observations on the problem of intrusion. First, people rarely act in concert to drive out offenders. Second, although others may express disapproval, the responsibility for expelling the intruder falls on the person directly behind the point of intrusion. Thirdly, those who stand before the point of invasion will protest least of all. Theoretically, Milgram wanted to discover the connection defensive reaction queue with her most characteristic feature: linear arrangement in the space of its participants. How does this unique spatial configuration affect how the queue protects its integrity? The results of the experiment showed that only 18.2% of people who occupied a position in line behind the intrusion point, and 8% of people who stood two people behind the intruder, expressed their protest in one form or another. Physical actions were used against the offender in 10.1% of cases, verbal opposition - in 21.7%, non-verbal actions (hostile glances, gestures - in 14.7% of cases) %. The experimenter's assistants noted that the intrusion task was extremely challenging for them. negative emotions, they took a long time to gather their courage. For some, the fact of the invasion was accompanied by physical symptoms of nausea and pallor (112, pp. 62-74). In general, Milgram's experiments demonstrated the fact of a lack of assistance to each other during the process of standing in line and a fairly easy penetration of strangers into it. Similar behavior of people around large quantity outsiders can be described as social compliance.

Crowd pull effect

Milgram's third experiment was aimed at identifying the relationship between the number of people in a crowd and the force of its attraction. Drawing on the ideas of Coleman and James, Milgram believed that any freely forming group reaches its maximum size by naturally gaining and losing its members. In an urban environment, a crowd has the ability to attract other people. He suggested two multidirectional trends: the first is the constant desire of a group member for independence, the second is the desire of an individual to join the group. There is also a “contagion” factor - a person is more likely to join large group, rather than to small.

Stanley Milgram conducted a study on group attraction different sizes. A stimulus group was created. The number of participants varied from one to 15 people. The experimenter's assistants - members of the stimulus group - looked at the window of one of the New York houses for a minute. The reactions of passers-by were filmed. As a result, it turned out that while 4% of passers-by joined the stimulus group consisting of one person, 40% of passers-by joined the stimulus group consisting of 15 people. Thus, the size of the stimulus group had a significant impact on the number of people who stopped and looked at the window of the house. Milgram concluded that the attractive power of a crowd depends on:

1) the number of people in the crowd, and the number is not necessarily constant, it increases with each passing passerby who stops;

2) the nature of the stimulus event: what more interesting event, the faster the crowd grows.

This study is a concrete embodiment of Milgram's quantitative approach to the study of crowds and lies in line with the American paradigm of social psychology.

So, American psychologists experimentally found some quantitative patterns mass behavior of people and revealed a number of socio-psychological effects.