Obedience to Authority - A Review

Obedience to Authority – Overall

Stanley Milgram’s book Obedience to Authority analyzes the series of experiments that he performed concerning the power of authority. While humans are generally moral, independently thinking beings, they are easily swayed by authority to do things that are against their personal virtues. There are multiple factors at work, but the two biggest factors are morality or obedience.

I had already known about Milgram’s experiments before I read the book, but it was merely a superficial summary of it. There was no reason provided as to why people obeyed or, more significantly, why they did not disobey. I had the same initial reaction as many other people to the results of the experiment; there was no way that almost everyone would shock an innocent person to death. Unfortunately, the data speaks for itself. When it comes to morality versus obedience, obedience often prevails.

After reading the book in its entirety, I think I understand the experiment a little more. Although the reasoning and procedure of the experiments are sound, I wonder if it was too narrow-minded in how different variables affected obedience. I think he should have explored more possible variables with more people involved. Variables such as age, socioeconomic status, and occupation should have been more closely analyzed. A person’s disposition has a lot to do with his or her tendency to obey. Statisticians say that having a sample size of at least forty-five is a good size, but many of his experiments included only twenty people. That is not nearly enough to get reliable data and draw conclusions from. Honestly, I would have been more satisfied with his results if he had several hundred subjects.

I was a little put off on how black and white Milgram was about the obedience. He said that all he focused on was whether the subject obeyed or disobeyed. There was a lot of stress and strain involved for many of the subjects. There are a multitude of factors at work when obedience and morality conflict. Milgram pointed out that the presence of an authority figure was sufficient to get compliance. However, when the authority figure is gone, or there is a precedence of disobedience, it is easier to follow one’s morality.

Milgram’s conclusions should be taken with a grain of salt. While it is surprising how many people will defy their own personal moral convictions to follow authority, there are those who would not allow it. After reading the book, the results are not as surprising as I originally thought because of the conditions that were used in the experiments.

In conclusion, Milgram offers us a very interesting study on the obedience to authority. When discussed, though, there should be discussion on the environment these subjects were in. The environment and other conditions greatly affected people’s tendency to obey, and oftentimes this was neglected when summarized. I think this sort of discussion should continue so that people are more conscious about not always blindly obeying authority when the situations arise.

Obedience to Authority - Chapter by Chapter

Chapter 1: The Dilemma of Obedience

I feel that this introductory chapter attempts to say too much before finding the results of the experiment. I appreciate Stanley Milgram’s brief discussion on the issue of morality versus obedience, but he delves too quickly into the conclusions of his series of obedience experiments before really describing them in detail. This first chapter left me with a bad first taste in my brain.

Chapter 2: Method of Inquiry

This chapter was a very straightforward chapter. Milgram outlines the procedures of the experiment and makes sure that the reader is sure that every step in the experiment was deliberate and well-thought out. Nothing special can be said about this chapter.

Chapter 3: Expected Behavior

The predictions on the results on the experiments were very clear: most everyone would not shock the learner after he protests. Of course, I would have said the same thing. On the surface, it is easy to see the moral issue of shocking someone against their will. Many of us would be quick to shout, “Stop the experiment! That poor man is in pain!” hypothetically. However, once we scratch deeper past the surface, we will find out that there is more there than the moral issue of hurting someone.

Chapter 4: Closeness of the Victim

Finally, we start seeing actual data from the first experiments on obedience. Of course, the results are extremely different from the predictions from the previous chapter. The data clearly shows that many people obeyed authority and shocked the learner all the way to the 450 volts. However, I believe that Milgram goes too far in overemphasizing the results in obedience. In the first experiment, where the learner was in a different room, even I would be able to say that there is a sense of detachment on the subject’s part to the learner. In experiments 2-4, there is a marked decrease in obedience because of the mere presence of the learner. A significant amount of people disobeyed when the learner began to protest. These are some results that, although possibly less significant than that which shows how many people went all the way, still need to be noted.

Chapter 5: Individuals Confront Authority

The personal stories from specific participants really interested me because it allowed me to find out about the people’s thoughts during the experiment and their reactions afterwards. However, I feel that Milgram was a little quick to make some of the judgments on how and why the people acted as they did. I wish he had just told us what they said and left it to the reader to analyze and deconstruct.

Chapter 6: Further Variations and Controls

The variations on the original versions of the experiment left me with a question that Milgram did not directly address: Where is the learner relative to the teacher? We already learned that proximity makes a huge difference on how people obey the experimenter, so I wonder where Milgram decided to place the two of them. It would have helped better analyze the results from these variations. Nonetheless, the variations allowed us to look at different factors affecting the subject’s obedience or disobedience in the experiment.

Chapter 7: Individuals Confront Authority II

This series of interviews included women this time. It still surprises me that women were not included in the original experiments. I also wonder if women are included in any experiments other than the one completely dedicated to the gender. This marked distinction between men and women concerns me a little because in the interviews that he chooses to share, Milgram invariably exposes some prejudice about women.

Chapter 8: Role Permutations

Now that I know the results of the previous experiments, the results of these role permutation experiments do not surprise at me at all. In Experiment 13, where an ordinary man gives orders, I find it the least believable for the subject, which could have partially compromised the premise of the experiment. I think that this experiment might be a little more complex than what Milgram describes.

Chapter 9: Group Effects

Milgram introduces a new factor to his experiments in this chapter: conformity. Peer pressure has just as strong an effect that obedience does, so this was interesting. When alone, the subject may not even realize that quitting in the middle of the experiment is okay. In these experiments, the precedent is there; the subject can quit if he wants. I think this, in conjunction with peer pressure, aids in getting more people to break the experimenter’s authority.

Chapter 10: Why Obedience?—An analysis

In this chapter, Milgram looks at why obedience is such a strong influencing factor in people’s behavior. His analysis seems quite obvious for me. As humans found mutual benefit in forming and maintaining groups, we needed order. We allow for someone to dictate this order in the group to ease the burden on oneself. Thus authority exists. In order for order to be maintained, we must learn to obey the authority.

Chapter 11: The Process of Obedience: Applying the Analysis to the Experiment

Milgram delves a little deeper into why obedience happens on a more psychological level. I did not find this chapter particularly interesting personally. Nothing really novel came out of this chapter.

Chapter 12: Strain and Disobedience

I am glad that Milgram included this chapter. He explicitly explained all of the strain that the different subjects experienced. This gives the dimension of clear conflict in moral standing versus obeying authority. Even though many people will obey authority over their own convictions, they were not blindly following authority.

Chapter 13: An Alternate Theory: Is Aggression the Key?

I think this chapter was mostly to address many people’s immediate reaction that the subjects in the experiment are horrible, mean people. This chapter, therefore, did not mean much to me. While there are truly mean people out there, many of them are moralistic and humane.

Chapter 14: Problems of Method

Milgram finally addresses some of the issues that I had with the experiment itself. To me the most significant factor to the experiment was the believability in the learner actually being shocked, but I think it would be easy to see that the shocks are not real. Many people, even if It was a minority, were not completely convinced that the learner was really being shocked, which may have skewed the results. Nonetheless, I appreciate that Milgram kept these subjects in his results and did not just dismiss them.

Chapter 15: Epilogue

In Milgram’s final chapter, he starts looking at the present and even at the future. In general, obedience to authority will not stop. The Vietnam War reflects some of the effects of obedience to Americans directly. I think this is the reason why people dislike the Vietnam War so much. This war really made Americans face the clear-cut conflict of authority versus morality. This conflict can be seen today in the War on Terror.