The Milgram experiment was a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience. Milgram first described his research in 1963 in an article published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, and later discussed his findings in greater depth in his 1974 book, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.
The experiments began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiments to answer this question: “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?”
I saw an emulation of this the other night, in a Horizon programme with Michael Portillo. It was disturbing just how many people went to the very end, taking the advice of the authority fiigure; in the Horizon programme, I think it was nine out of 12, and I think they said 60 – 65% did so in the original experiments.
Frightening, but fascinating too.
Wow.
I\’ve heard of this experiment but I\’ve never actually seen a video of it!
I\’m pretty sure the doctor off camera is the same guy who does the voice over during the intro to lost in space. haha
JP
Strangely enough I was watching The Heist yesterday.
Do you think you’d have gone all the way to the end if you hadn’t heard of the experiment before?
I’d like to say I definitely wouldn’t, but I’m not sure. I think it would depend on how scary the guy telling me to do it was…
For more information about Stanley Milgram and his pioneering work try: http://www.stanleymilgram.com/
I have heard of this type of experiment before, although I didn’t know it was called the Milgram experiment. We observe every day that people behave differently in different situations, especially when out of their “comfort zone” and when being directed by authority, even in everyday situations such as at work. Is it possible that now, with the immediate nature of the internet and accessibility to people in all walks of life, and with the possibility of a different attitude to authority figures (our generation were almost conditioned to respect authority figures without those persons having to earn that respect necessarily) that a member of the younger generation might not respond so readily? With the advent of maestro illusionists such as Derren Brown et al perhaps people would be a little more cynical these days anyway?
oooh, was that what they did on the hiest? i’d love to be part of one of them experiments if it is … i guess its a true test of character.
I really dont want to work but authorities made me do it anyhow … but if it hadn’t been for the money …. ehehe ..
It start already with parents …. they made you do or dont do things which were so not like you saw to it yourself but you had to do it anyhow… (or not).
Then school ….
Work …
Boosting someone’s sexuality can cause temporarily lack of moral in people which can make you do things or say things which you normally would not have done.
As it is with alcohol ofcourse. Too much fun with your friends in a very nonsubmissive way …
So not just authority can make you do things which are normally not in your system.
If your life is on the line, if authorities threaten to kill you if you dont do what they tell you to do (kill someone e.g.) … we will never know what we would do … (hopefully that is).
Those who are in the army will kill if they need to.
Being way too up will always cause a larger distance between you and your normal bases, at least that’s the case for me. Once after I’d been smoking a joint someone told me that he had gone to a funeral .. and I really could not get my normal self inside … I kept it very normal (as I was aware of the fact that I was so not into normal civilization/socialization in that area) .. the only thing I was feeling was the need to laugh …
I tend to keep it a bit more normal even when I’m just as up as the others if there is someone who is not up. Depends a bit on the situation and the person. To a certain limit that is.
It´s so good to be (pretty much)aware in this Life …clip is horrifying…
Everytime I\’ve watched The Heist I\’ve wondered why the volunteers happily kept (albeit unreal) administering potentially fatal shocks to someone however I\’ve since come up with a theory which is that perhaps the volunteers simply didn\’t realise how harmful the electric shocks they were administering could be.
Could this be a possibility or am I just having a blonde moment and not thinking of any situation where a person is under orders from an authoritative figure?
This reminds me of when Derren made a young girl kill a kitten. I vaguely remember the Milgram experiement being referenced in that episode, but I could be mistaken. This video and the kitten video are different things, as far as I can tell, but the “authority figure” was central to both scenarios.
(Derren, was the Rubik’s Cube used to create a sense of urgency and desperation?)
Victoria: The authority figure did assure them that the shocks did ‘no permanent harm’, but at the same time, they heard cries (and later an ominous silence) from the ‘other volunteer’ that would indicate otherwise. I think that’s part of the experiment — do people use their own best judgment, or do they rely against evidence on whatever the authority figure tells them?
Thinking about it, though, from an evolutionary pov, it kind of makes sense to obey the authority figure. As social animals, early humans would probably live as a group with a distinct leader, much like chimpanzees. The leader would be one of the most experienced and capable individuals in the group, and in an emergency, would be able to direct the others to safety — provided they obey him.
Thus, obedient individuals (as well as leader types, of course) would have a greater chance of survival than those that would go against orders and do what they thought best.
That might explain why so many people felt the need to obey authority… it’s still creepy, though.
I first heard of the Milgram Experiment in “the Economist” and a few months later saw it in “The Heist”.
I think Victoria makes a valid point, that unless it’s clearly understood how fatal a 240 volt jolt can be (the equivalent of sticking your fingers in an eletrical socket) it’s impossible to guage whether the test subject understands the full significance of what they’re doing.
Re. Gary’s comment… I didn’t see that one. However, I got talking to a friend I met recently a few weeks back who I always thought was a fairly level-headed animal loving pacifist.
He confessed to me that when he was in his mid-teens, a gang he was trying to impress persuaded him to whack a kitten with a baseball bat, as if it was a ball.
He seemed genuinely sorry to have gone through with it, but it gave me cold shivers to think this reasonably rational guy I thought I knew who’d since taken up buddhism could cave in to peer pressure so easily and do something so morally abhorrent. How much would you need to join a gang and get their approval to do something like that?
I had real difficulty shaking that image of him from my head later…
Yay – my favourite! Thank you very much for the vid x x x
Thanks to The Heist I remembered this experiment for my Psychology exam. There was a 12-mark question on obedience and it came in very handy, believe me. Derren, you make learning fun!…
flapjack: It’s not the voltage that’ll kill you, it’s the amperage, afaik. Only the voltage is shown on the device, so the lethality of the shocks is unknown. The sounds from the other room make it abundantly clear that there’s serious pain and very probably serious harm going on, though, so I don’t think the subjects are merely unaware of the ‘consequences’ of their actions…
One of the most important experiments of our time
I just wanted to thank you for posting this video. I have my psych exam on Monday and have just taken a break in revision. I sat down to have some lunch and thought I’d see if I could find Derren’s version of the Milgram experiment to remind me of the details. Imagine my delight when I saw this. An experiment I’d read about lots over the last year and now I get to see it in action. A fascinating and disturbing experiment.
If you are interested in this you may also wabt to check out a 2008 German film called ‘The Wave’ based on an experiment carried out by a school teacher in California in 1967 in an attempt to show his students through practice how Hitler and the Nazi party came to do such terrible things.