Obedience to Authority (Perennial Classics)

by Stanley Milgram

These ordinary adults were reduced to mindless obedient school children who do not know how to exit from a most unpleasant situation until teacher gives them permission to do so.

Before answering, consider the next question, which I posed directly to Stanley Milgram: “After the final 450 volt switch was thrown, how many of the participant-teachers spontaneously got out of their seats and went to inquire about the condition of their learner?” Milgram’s answer: “Not one, not ever!”

The essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes, and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions.

There are, of course, enormous differences between carrying out the orders of a commanding officer during times of war and carrying out the orders of an experimenter. Yet the essence of certain relationships remain, for one may ask in a general way: How does a man behave when he is told by a legitimate authority to act against a third individual? If anything, we may expect the experimenter’s power to be considerably less than that of the general, since he has no power to enforce his imperatives, and participation in a psychological experiment scarcely evokes the sense of urgency and dedication engendered by participation in war.

A commonly offered explanation is that those who shocked the victim at the most severe level were monsters, the sadistic fringe of society. But if one considers that almost two-thirds of the participants fall into the category of “obedient” subjects, and that they represented ordinary people drawn from working, managerial, and professional classes, the argument becomes very shaky.

The ordinary person who shocked the victim did so out of a sense of obligation—a conception of his duties as a subject—and not from any peculiarly aggressive tendencies. This is, perhaps, the most fundamental lesson of our study: ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process.

What, then, keeps the person obeying the experimenter? First, there is a set of “binding factors” that lock the subject into the situation. They include such factors as politeness on his part, his desire to uphold his initial promise of aid to the experimenter, and the awkwardness of withdrawal. Second, a number of adjustments in the subject’s thinking occur that undermine his resolve to break with the authority. The adjustments help the subject maintain his relationship with the experimenter, while at the same time reducing the strain brought about by the experimental conflict.

The subject entrusts the broader tasks of setting goals and assessing morality to the experimental authority he is serving. The most common adjustment of thought in the obedient subject is for him to see himself as not responsible for his own actions.

Although a person acting under authority performs actions that seem to violate standards of conscience, it would not be true to say that he loses his moral sense. Instead, it acquires a radically different focus. He does not respond with a moral sentiment to the actions he performs. Rather, his moral concern now shifts to a consideration of how well he is living up to the expectations that the authority has of him. In wartime, a soldier does not ask whether it is good or bad to bomb a hamlet; he does not experience shame or guilt in the destruction of a village: rather he feels pride or shame depending on how well he has performed the mission assigned to him.

Another psychological force at work in this situation may be termed “counteranthropomorphism.” For decades psychologists have discussed the primitive tendency among men to attribute to inanimate objects and forces the qualities of the human species. A countervailing tendency, however, is that of attributing an impersonal quality to forces that are essentially human in origin and maintenance. Some people treat systems of human origin as if they existed above and beyond any human agent, beyond the control of whim or human feeling. The human element behind agencies and institutions is denied. Thus, when the experimenter says, “The experiment requires that you continue,” the subject feels this to be an imperative that goes beyond any merely human command. He does not ask the seemingly obvious question, “Whose experiment? Why should the designer be served while the victim suffers?”

Of considerable interest, however, is the fact that many subjects harshly devalue the victim as a consequence of acting against him. Such comments as, “He was so stupid and stubborn he deserved to get shocked,” were common. Once having acted against the victim, these subjects found it necessary to view him as an unworthy individual, whose punishment was made inevitable by his own deficiencies of intellect and character.

Some derived satisfaction from their thoughts and felt that—within themselves, at least—they had been on the side of the angels.

Tyrannies are perpetuated by diffident men who do not possess the courage to act out their beliefs.

variation of the basic experiment depicts a dilemma more common than the one outlined above: the subject was not ordered to push the trigger that shocked the victim, but merely to perform a subsidiary act (administering the word-pair test) before another subject actually delivered the shock. In this situation, 37 of 40 adults from the New Haven area continued to the highest shock level on the generator.

it is psychologically easy to ignore responsibility when one is only an intermediate link in a chain of evil action but is far from the final consequences of the action.

The victim’s responses were a key element in the situation and needed to be worked out carefully. In pilot studies, at first no vocal feedback from the victim was used. It was thought that the verbal and voltage designations on the control panel would create sufficient pressure to curtail the subject’s obedience. However, this proved not to be the case. In the absence of protests from the learner, virtually every subject in the pilot study, once commanded, went blithely to the end of the board, seemingly in-different to the verbal designations.

This force took the form of protests from the victim. Initially, mild protests were used, but these proved inadequate. Subsequently, more vehement protests were inserted into the experimental procedure. To our consternation, even the strongest protests from the victim did not prevent many subjects from administering the harshest punishment ordered by the experimenter. But the protests did lower the mean of the maximum shocks somewhat and created some spread in the subject’s performance; therefore, the victim’s cries were recorded on tape and incorporated into the regular experimental procedure. The situation did more than highlight the technical difficulties of finding a workable experimental procedure: it indicated that subjects would obey authority to a greater extent than we had supposed. It also pointed to the importance of feedback from the victim in controlling the subject’s behavior.

Now let us look at the actual performance of subjects in the experiment. To begin, we shall consider the results of the Remote-Feedback variation (Experiment 1). It differs slightly from the usual situation in that no vocal complaint is heard from the victim. He is placed in another room where he cannot be seen by the subject, nor can his voice be heard; his answers flash silently on the signal box. However, at 300 volts the laboratory walls resound as he pounds in protest. After 315 volts, no further answers appear, and the pounding ceases.

Of the 40 subjects, 26 obeyed the orders of the experimenter to the end, proceeding to punish the victim until they reached the most potent shock available on the generator.

Experiment 2 (Voice-Feedback) was identical to the first except that vocal protests were introduced. As in the first condition, the victim was placed in an adjacent room, but his complaints could be heard clearly through the walls of the laboratory. Experiment 3 (Proximity) was similar to the second, except that the victim was placed in the same room as the subject, a few feet from him. Thus he was visible as well as audible, and voice cues were provided. Experiment 4 (Touch-Proximity) was identical to the third, with this exception: the victim received a shock only when his hand rested on a shock plate. At the 150-volt level the victim demanded to be let free and refused to place his hand on the shock plate.

One subject in the Remote condition said, “It’s funny how you really begin to forget that there’s a guy out there, even though you can hear him. For a long time I just concentrated on pressing the switches and reading the words.”

Incipient group-formation. Placing the victim in another room not only takes him farther from the subject, it also draws the subject and the experimenter relatively closer. There is incipient group formation between the experimenter and the subject, from which the victim is excluded. The wall between the victim and the others deprives him of an intimacy which the experimenter and the subject could feel. In the Remote condition, the victim is truly an outsider, who stands alone, physically and psychologically.

Neither the less elegant laboratory nor the mention of a heart condition leads to greater disobedience. Twenty-six of the 40 subjects continued to the end in the present condition, compared with 25 out of 40 in the Voice-Feedback condition, merely a slight chance variation. The distribution of breakoff points is shown in Table 3.

In the postexperimental interview subjects were asked, “What is the maximum sample shock you would be willing to accept?” The data are available for 39 subjects in this condition and are shown in Figure 9. Three defiant subjects would accept shocks more powerful than they had administered. Of the 26 obedient subjects, 7 were willing to sample the 450-volt shock they had just administered, while 19 were not. In most cases there is a marked discrepancy between the shock the subject administered and the level he would be willing to accept as a sample. Thus three lowest dots in the extreme right side of the graph represent three subjects who administered 450 volts but would not be willing to sample more than 45 volts. Similar and even more extreme results are found in all experimental conditions when this question was asked.

Obedience dropped sharply when the experimenter was physically removed from the laboratory. The number of obedient subjects in the first condition (26) was almost three times as great as in the second (9), in which the experimenter gave his orders by telephone. Subjects seemed able to resist the experimenter far better when they did not have to confront him face to face.

Obedience to destructive commands was in some degree dependent on the proximal relations between authority and subject, and any

Some subjects rely on the idea of an implicit social contract in explaining their own obedience. They reasoned thus: they had contracted with the experimenter to relinquish some of their freedom in the pursuit of a commonly held value—advancement of knowledge. Moreover, they perceived a system of double consent to be at work: the victim also had entered into the contract with the experimental authority and was not free to renounce his obligations unilaterally. Moreover, the argument goes, the victim had entered into the authority system of the experimenter without placing any prior conditions on how he was to be treated. He must, therefore, accept the consequences of his own freely made decision. However unpleasant the experience might be for him, contractual obligations must be honored. Society is built on this presupposition.

These findings show that the social contract doctrine is a feeble determinant of behavior. Sixteen of the 40 subjects continued to obey the experimenter to the end of the board, disregarding the contractual limitation the victim had attached to his participation. This is to be compared with the 20 subjects who continued to obey in the relevant control, condition 6. There is some increment in disobedience, but it could easily represent a chance variation. Subjects were aware of the injustice being done to the victim, but they allowed the experimenter to handle the issue as he saw fit.

As it turned out, the level of obedience in Bridgeport, although somewhat reduced, was not significantly lower than that obtained at Yale. A large proportion of the Bridgeport subjects were fully obedient to the experimenter’s commands (48 percent of the Bridgeport subjects delivered the maximum shock versus 65 percent in the corresponding condition at Yale), as Table 3 shows.

The average (mean) shocks used across the thirty critical trials are shown in Figure 11, with an over-all average of 3.6. (It is to be recalled that the victim indicated no signs of discomfort at all until shock level 5.) We may also consider the maximum shock delivered by each subject (even if he used it only once and at any point in his performance). Three subjects limited their shocks to the very lowest on the board, 28 went no higher than the first indication of discomfort, and 38 did not go beyond the point where the learner vehemently protested (shock level 10). Two subjects provided the exception, administering the 25th and the 30th shock levels. But the over-all result was that the great majority of subjects delivered the very lowest shocks to the victim when the choice was left up to them.

First, despite his numerous, agitated objections, his continuous and persistent dissent, he continues to administer the shocks as ordered by the experimenter. There is, thus, a dissociation between words and action. Second, by no stretch of the imagination can it be said that this man wanted to administer shocks to the learner. To the contrary, it was a painful act for him, one which came about because of his relationship to the experimenter. Third, we note that “responsibility” is an issue important to the subject, and it is only when the experimenter explicitly accepts responsibility that, after several seconds of hesitation, the subject is able to continue. Finally, the language employed by the participant is revealing. Despite the considerable tension of the situation, a tone of courtesy and deference is meticulously maintained. The subject’s objections strike us as inordinately weak and inappropriate in view of the events in which he is immersed. He thinks he is killing someone, yet he uses the language of the tea table.

“Well, I faithfully believed the man was dead until we opened the door. When I saw him, I said, ‘Great, this is great.’ But it didn’t bother me even to find that he was dead. I did a job.”

The results of the experiment are shown in Table 4. Not a single subject complied with the learner’s demand; every subject stopped administering shocks upon the experimenter’s order.

Thus the subject is confronted with a general situation that has been defined by an experimental authority, but with orders on specific levels issued by an insistent, ordinary man who lacks any status as an authority.

The results of this experiment are shown in Table 4. What occurs is quite striking: the experimenter, strapped into the electric chair, fares no better than a victim who is not an authority at all.

The most pervasive principle is that the subject’s action is directed by the person of higher status. Simultaneously there is pressure to find a coherent line of action in this situation. Such a line becomes evident only when there is a clear hierarchy lacking contradictions and incompatible elements.

Subjects are predisposed to perceive clear hierarchies lacking contradictions and incompatible elements. They will, therefore, use whatever bases are possible to ascertain and respond to the higher authority.

The results of the experiment are shown in Table 5. In this group setting, 36 of the 40 subjects defy the experimenter (while the corresponding number in the absence of group pressure is 14). The effects of peer rebellion are very impressive in undercutting the experimenter’s authority. Indeed, of the score of experimental variations completed in this study, none was so effective in undercutting the experimenter’s authority as the manipulation reported here.

The fact that groups so effectively undermine the experimenter’s power reminds us that individuals act as they do for three principal reasons: they carry certain internalized standards of behavior; they are acutely responsive to the sanctions that may be applied to them by authority; and finally, they are responsive to the sanctions potentially applicable to them by the group.

Any competent manager of a destructive bureaucratic system can arrange his personnel so that only the most callous and obtuse are directly involved in violence. The greater part of the personnel can consist of men and women who, by virtue of their distance from the actual acts of brutality, will feel little strain in their performance of supportive functions. They will feel doubly absolved from responsibility. First, legitimate authority has given full warrant for their actions. Second, they have not themselves committed brutal physical acts.

Let me summarize the argument so far: (1) organized social life provides survival benefits to the individuals who are part of it, and to the group; (2) whatever behavioral and psychological features have been necessary to produce the capacity for organized social life have been shaped by evolutionary forces; (3) from the standpoint of cybernetics, the most general need in bringing self-regulating automata into a coordinated hierarchy is to suppress individual direction and control in favor of control from higher-level components; (4) more generally, hierarchies can function only when internal modification occurs in the elements of which they are composed; (5) functional hierarchies in social life are characterized by each of these features, and (6) the individuals who enter into such hierarchies are, of necessity, modified in their functioning.

He does so because conscience, which regulates impulsive aggressive action, is per force diminished at the point of entering a hierarchical structure.

shall term this the agentic state, by which I mean the condition a person is in when he sees himself as an agent for carrying out another person’s wishes. This term will be used in opposition to that of autonomy—that is, when a person sees himself as acting on his own.

First, he presents a specific ethical content to be followed. Second, he trains the child to comply with authoritative injunctions per se. Thus, when a parent says, “Don’t strike smaller children,” he provides not one imperative but two. The first concerns the manner in which the recipient of the command is to treat smaller children (the prototype of those who are helpless and innocent); the second and implicit imperative is, “And obey me!” Thus, the very genesis of our moral ideals is inseparable from the inculcation of an obedient attitude. Moreover, the demand for obedience remains the only consistent element across a variety of specific commands, and thus tends to acquire a prepotent strength relative to any particular moral content.

the modern industrial world forces individuals to submit to impersonal authorities, so that responses are made to abstract rank, indicated by an insignia, uniform or title.

compliance, the most ingenious is this: the individual is moved up a niche in the hierarchy, thus both motivating the person and perpetuating the structure simultaneously.

The net result of this experience is the internalization of the social order—that is, internalizing the set of axioms by which social life is conducted. And the chief axiom is: do what the man in charge says.

First, the subject enters the situation with the expectation that someone will be in charge.

Second, external accouterments are often used to signify the authority in a given situation.

Third, the subject notes the absence of competing authorities.