In chapter 1 Stanley Milgram discusses obedience and sites the Nazi experimentation as an example of obedience gone bad. He discusses the goal of the experiment (to explore adults’ willingness to obey authority and under what circumstances they do and do not obey) and discusses possible explanations for obeying and disobeying.
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In chapter 2 Milgram writes about how he performed the study. He discusses how they obtained participants, the location of the experiment, the procedure of the experiment, the learning task involved, the shock generator and instructions provided by the experimenter, the experimenter feedback, the feedback from the subject, the data they focused on and the interview and debriefing of the subject
In chapter 3 Milgram discusses the expected behavior and the predictions made by psychiatrists, college students and middle-class adults with various jobs. They predicted that nearly all subjects would refuse to obey the experimenter and that only a very small percentage would be expected to proceed to the strongest voltage.
In chapter 4 Milgram provides data and information about the effect of the proximity of the victim to the teacher (subject). In Experiment 1 the teacher got no feedback from the victim other than a pounding on the walls at 300 volts. In Experiment 2 vocal protests were used. In Experiment 3 the victim was placed in the same room as the teacher. In Experiment 4 the victim only got shocked when he put his hand on a shock plate. When the victim refused (at 150 volts) the teacher was ordered to force the victim to put his hand on the shock plate.
In chapter 5 Milgram presents the readers with information about several of the subjects. Milgram includes their observations of the subject as the experiment was performed, background information received during an interview after the experiment and information they gave in a survey months after the experiment.
In chapter 6 Milgram describes seven other experiments that he did to see how his results changed. Some of the variations in the experiments include changing the location of the experiment, trying the experiment with a new victim and experimenter, including women in the studies, using a contract, performing the study under a different name and allowing the subject to choose the shock level.
In chapter 7 Milgram provides data and information similar to what was presented in chapter 5 but about the subjects who participated in the experiments described in chapter 6. One of the subjects was from Germany, and at 210 volts she decided to stop. Milgram attributes this to her exposure to Nazi propaganda.
Chapter 8 provides information on six more experiments that Milgram performed. In these experiments he changed the position (whether the subject is giving, receiving or ordering the shock), status (whether the person is presented as an authority or ordinary man) and action (the conduct of the people in their positions) to see how his results would change.
In Chapter 9, Milgram discusses the effect of the group and discusses the difference between conformity and obedience. The main differences described are:
-Obedience to authority occurs within a hierarchy
-Conformity is imitation but obedience is not
-The prescription for actions is explicit in obedience but implicit in conformity
Milgram then describes two experiments performed in a group. In one there are three teachers (one of them being the subject) and the two actors that are teachers rebel. In the other experiment the subject does not do the shocking but performs other acts like asking the questions.
In chapter 10, the focus of the book changes to analyze the findings described in the first half of the book. Milgram looks deeper into the causes of obedience. In this chapter he defines the agentic state (the condition a person is in when he sees himself as an agent for carrying out another person’s wishes). He refers to this state as the keystone of their analysis.
In chapter 11 Milgram considers forces that impacted the subject before the experiment (the family structure, the institutional setting, and a reward system) and during the experiment (the perception of legitimate authority, the appearance of the authority figure, the lack of any competing authorities, and a visible link between the function of the authority and the commands being given). The agentic state is also further explored and its properties defined.
Chapter 12 focuses on strain and disobedience. Milgram discusses sources of strain, things that help to buffer the strain and how people address the issue of strain through avoidance, denial and subterfuges. He also discusses ways that people “blow off steam” from strain by verbally disagreeing with the authority, physically reacting through trembling and sweating and in some cases being disobedient by refusing to continue.
In chapter 13 Milgram considers a different theory about his experiments, aggression, and why it is erroneous to him. He discusses soldiers and a different experiment done by Buss and Berkowitz to investigate aggression.
In chapter 14 Milgram discusses the different assertions made against the findings of these experiments. The main assertions were:
-People in the study are the typical sort
-The subjects didn’t believe they were administering real shocks
-The findings cannot be applied outside the laboratory setting
Milgram addresses each of these in detail within the chapter.
In the final chapter Milgram relates his findings to the real world and discusses the Vietnam War. He includes a CBS interview with a Vietnam War soldier and relates the obedience in the war to the obedience he discovered in the lab.
Discussion
I had no idea Milgram performed so many experiments. He considered a lot more variables than I knew about. While I did appreciate how thorough he has been in his studies so far, it did get a little old since the results were all similar: people generally obey the authority to the point of “hurting” the learner. I also want to note that he was mainly watching for proof that we obey authority, and while I agree with the overall findings of the study, some of the stuff did start to sound bias. Going by what I’ve been taught, in many studies nowadays, they usually have researchers unrelated to the study perform it to avoid such bias, but that wasn’t an option here. On page 47 Milgram seemed almost to be forcing an answer out of a subject when he says, “He does not seem to grasp the concept. The interviewer simplifies the question. Finally the subject assigns major responsibility to the experimenter.” While I know they were trying to get the subject to discuss responsibility, I don’t know how hard they tried to lead him there.
Still, all the different experiments were interesting and well thought out. I’m curious to know how he decided which subjects to include in chapters 5 and 7.
I enjoyed the second-half of the book more than the first-half. While all his findings in the first half were interesting, I enjoyed reading more about the analysis and the discussion that arose as a result of the findings. I appreciate how thorough the book was. Milgram even included the opposing side and made good points against it. I also appreciated how he related his findings to the real world to give us an idea on a grander scale than just that of the laboratory. I also thought it was interesting that these experiments were repeated in so many other places like in South Africa, Rome and Australia.
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