What can we learn from the Milgram's experiment?

What was Milgram's experiment?
Briefly, in the famous Yale university Milgram experiment by Stanley Milgram, normal people from off the street were induced by authority figures to subject others to life-threatening electric shocks if they gave wrong answers to word-pair association questions. The study suggested we obey heinous orders to inflict what we believe to be real pain on others when given orders from someone we consider to be a legitimate authority.

In 1961, shortly after

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Adolf Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem, Milgram started his experiments. In all, ~700 volunteers participated in Milgram's studies in the 1960s. In the most famous among these, 40 men, recruited using newspaper ads for a study of memory and learning, were paid $4.50 for their participation. For the experiments, Milgram developed an intimidating shock generator. Shock levels ranged from 15 to 450 volts with increments of 15, each switch clearly labeled 'Slight Shock', 'Moderate Shock', 'Strong Shock', 'Very Strong Shock', 'Intense Shock', 'Extreme Intensity Shock', 'Danger:Severe Shock', all the way up to a level simply ominously labeled as 'XXX', all this to say the subjects recruited as Teachers (actually the Learners) couldn't argue plausible deniability about the consequences of their actions. Even more compelling step to negate plausible deniability? Teachers received a sample shock of 45 volts prior to the experiment (1).

Participants were split into two groups, Teachers who subjected Students to electric shocks when they gave wrong answers. Unbeknownst to the Teachers, the Students were in on the experiment and only pretending to being shocked. The Experimenter was the authority figure who greeted the Teachers and instructed them about the study. As the experiment proceeded, the Teacher would hear the fake verbal protests of Students being subjected to shocks, turn to the Experimenter for advice on how to proceed. The Experimenter would respond, 'Please continue/the experiment requires that you continue/it is absolutely essential that you continue/you have no other choice/you must go on' (2). As the shock levels increased, the Students would plead to be released, complain about a heart condition, and when the shocks reached the 300 volt level, even bang on the wall and demand to be released. After this stage, the Students would become completely silent and refuse to answer any more questions. The Experimenter would then 'instruct' the Teacher to gauge this silence as a 'wrong' answer and deliver another, higher electric shock (2). 26 out of 40 Teachers, i.e., 65%, delivered the maximum shocks. Even as many of them became extremely agitated, distraught and angry, they continued to follow the Experimenter's orders all the way through.

How credible are Milgram's data? Plagued by variations, Confirmation bias, data selection, and playing along.
As it turns out, Milgram's data had many flaws. Discovering hundreds of audiotapes of Milgram's experiments at Yale, psychologist Gina Perry found he performed at least 24 variations of the shock experiments, a major scientific no-no since methodological variations preclude pooling such data. Her analysis of these audiotapes indicated several instances of Experimenters coercing Teachers. In other experiments, far fewer Teachers obeyed the Experimenters' orders and in some, even none obeyed (3, 4).

Perry also found that Teachers who truly believed Students were being shocked were also more likely to disobey the Experimenter's commands and deliver lower-voltage shocks, i.e., that Milgram's experiments were plagued with and not controlled for confirmation bias.

One of the most interesting of Milgram's variations involved 20 pairs of men who were somehow related or known to each other, father-son, friends or neighbors. In this instance, defiance of the Experimenter dominated, with only 3 of 20 subjects, i.e., 15%, choosing to apply the maximum voltage (3). Disappointingly, Milgram never reported these results, an odious example of data selection, i.e., suppressing data that didn't fit the hypothesis.

Tracking down some of the volunteers and Milgram's research assistants, Perry discovered plausible cases of Teachers deducing the real purpose of the experiment and simply playing along. This harkens back to one of the oldest conundrums in psychological experimentation, namely, who's testing who? From Clever Hans, the horse who duped his experimenters to studies of sexual proclivities in Polynesia where respondents deduced what the interrogators wanted to hear and answered accordingly, Perry's backtracking suggests that in Milgram's case as well, tables may have sometimes been turned on Milgram and his Experimenters.

How reproducible are Milgram's data? Caveats notwithstanding, surprisingly robust, they withstand the test of time.
Despite various caveats uncovered by Perry's investigative back-tracking of Milgram's data and subjects, other psychologists have largely recapitulated his results. These include a study by Wesley Kilham and Leon Mann in 1974 (5) and a 2009 study by Jerry Bulger of Santa Clara University (6). The many methodological differences between these studies, for e.g., Bulger's had a maximum shock voltage of 150 volts compared to Milgram's 450, serve to strengthen rather than weaken the overarching conclusion that under certain circumstances, obedience to authority outweighs ethics.

Milgram's experiments: pioneer in Situationism (psychology)
With Hannah Arendt's 'haunting specter of universal co-operation' (7) an ever-present backdrop in a post-Holocaust world, a dangerous extrapolation of the Milgram experiments is that 'there is an 'Eichmann in every one of us' (7), and indeed this has become an all too frequent interpretation, something Arendt herself vehemently contested.

Rather, Milgram's results beg the oppressive yet compelling question from each of us, 'What would I have done in their shoes?'. Here lies the real value of Milgram's experiment. Rather than an a priori rank and file of born psychopaths, Milgram's study suggests instead that our behavior is shaped by what we observe as the norm in our environment, i.e., situationism. Why? Because situationism serves to exonerate us of the consequences of our ethically wrong behavior. As Milgram wrote in Obedience to Authority 'It is psychologically easy to ignore responsibility when one is only an immediate link in a chain of evil action' (8).

Charlie Munger further explains that authority is part of, but not all of, the formula necessary for such strict obedience, the other ingredients being 'consistency,[behavioral] contrast, reason-respecting', all operating in combination toward the same end (9), i.e., compliance to authority. In Milgram's experiments, these factors include physical presence of the authority figure, sponsorship of the experiment by Yale, a prestigious academic institution, and apparently random separation of participants into Teachers and Students.

Recent examples from real-life, what are the most heart-stopping features of wanton police brutality evidenced in videos such as those of the killing of Shooting of Walter Scott and Shooting of Laquan McDonald? The utter casualness of the process of killing another human being, the calm, unhurried demeanor of other police who arrive soon after and mill around, seemingly oblivious to the flickering out of life of a human being lying at their feet. All unmistakable signs of situationism, individuals so inured to brutality, it's become not just another habit but rather an entire culture. Such habituation to an extreme, especially in the realm of evil, is the heartbreaking lesson of Milgram's experiment.

Is there hope? Situationism implies yes, just as evil can be shaped into existence in an individual by their environment so can benevolence, Civil disobedience, Pay it forward and Volunteering being some ready examples.

Bibliography

1. Fry, Sara T. "A history and theory of informed consent: Ruth R. Faden and Tom L. Beauchamp, in collaboration with Nancy MP King, New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Cloth, 392 pages." (1988): 169-170
2. The Milgram Obedience Experiment. The Perils of Obedience. Kendra Cherry. June 06, 2015. Why Was the Milgram Experiment So Controversial?
3. Page on northgeorgia.edu
4. Perry, G. (2012). Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments. New York: The New Press. p. 139
5. Kilham, Wesley, and Leon Mann. "Level of destructive obedience as a function of transmitter and executant roles in the Milgram obedience paradigm." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 29.5 (1974): 696.
6. Burger, Jerry M. "Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today?." American Psychologist 64.1 (2009): 1.
7. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin Books, 1983).
8. Milgram Stanley, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View, Harper and Row, New York, 1974.
9. Bevelin, Peter. Seeking wisdom: from Darwin to Munger. PCA Publications LLC, 2007. Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger, 3rd Edition: Peter Bevelin: 9781578644285: Amazon.com: Books

Further reading

1. The Aeon, October 4, 2014. Malcolm Harris. The psychology of torture. The Milgram experiments showed that anybody could be capable of torture when obeying an authority. Are they still valid?  Is it time to stop doing any more Milgram experiments? — Malcolm Harris — Aeon Essays
2. The Atlantic, January, 2015. Cari Romm. Rethinking One of Psychology'sMost Infamous Experiments. Rethinking One of Psychology's Most Infamous Experiments

https://www.quora.com/What-can-we-learn-from-the-Milgrams-experiment/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala