Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram
Chapter 1, The Dilemma of Obedience: It begins by explaining the part of human nature the experiment tries to shed light on. Many atrocities have been committed throughout history where the assailants are "normal" people. The author believes that a possible cause is the humans ability to lose sight of human decencies under authorities.
Chapter 2, Method of Inquiry: The entire experiment is explained with considerable detail. This experiment is incredibly well thought out taking into account all angles of approach to ensure the collected data is targeted at the hypothesis.
Chapter 3, Expected Behavior: Different groups ranging from psychiatrists, college students and middle class workers were explained the experiment and asked to predict the outcome. All thought that very few would go all the way to 450 volts with the mean point of disobedience being around 150 volts.
Chapter 4, Closeness of the Victim: New slight variations of the experiment were tested where the learner is in three different locations. Them being in another room, across a table from the teacher and finally right next to the teacher requiring them to touch. The results found that the closer the learner was to the subject, the more likely they were to disobey.
Chapter 5, Individuals Confront Authority: The dialogue and experimenter's thoughts on a few specific subject are given. The difference in thought processes among the subjects is remarkably different even though only one of them actually disobeyed.
Chapter 6, Further Variations and Controls: Even more slightly different experiments are tested. The introduction of female subjects, proximity of the experimenter to the subject and locations are a few examples. Results show that women act the same as men, more disobey if the experimenter is absent and the location has little effect.
Chapter 7, Individuals Confront Authority II: specific subjects are focused on in this chapter. Subjects from different variations of the experiment are analyzed in detail thought the experimenting process.
Chapter 8, Role of Permutations: The three roles in the experiment are now altered in different ways to further test the power of authority figures. When there are two conflicting equal authorities, all subject disobey in the freeze of authority. When an authority takes on the learning role they effectively give up their power as an authority.
Chapter 9, Group Effects: Next, the effect of being in a group where a fake teacher disobeys then gives the naive teacher the idea to do so as well. When fake teachers obey the entire way, the naive teacher is even more likely to obey as well.
Chapter 10, Why Obedience?-An Analysis: The rest of the chapters focus on the analysis of the experiments and its findings. The author explains the human nature that is most likely behind the reasoning for obedience instead of disobedience in straining situations such as in the experiment.
Chapter 11, The Process of Obedience: Applying the Analysis to the Experiment: Dr. Milgram goes through the steps he observed subjects going through during the experiment. People want to obey when they see a clear authority figure, so they go through different thought processes to explain or dodge responsibility to keep a positive self image.
Chapter 12, Strain and Disobedience: Dr. Milgram adds to his obey or disobey process tree by adding a new strain variable. When the strain a person feels is larger than their need to obey, then they will disobey. He then goes into explaining what reduces or eliminates strain.
Chapter 13, An Alternative Theory: Is Aggression the Key?: Some critiques suggest anger is the root to obeying a command that clearly harms another person. The author explains that the mass majority of the subject exhibit no signs of aggression. If a subject was aggressive, they would not be under strain and the result of the experiments showed that most of the subjects were under some level of strain.
Chapter 14, Problems of Method: There were three main critiques of the the experimenting. The people were not diverse enough, they did not believe they were administering shocks to the learner and it is not possible to generalize to the larger world. Dr. Milgram refutes these accusations to further prove that people, given particular situations, are capable of harming others when yielding to authority figures.
Chapter 15, Epilogue: The last chapter was used to tie all the other chapters together. Dr. Milgram uses the Vietnam War where examples of soldiers under a clear authority committing atrocities happened, but many soldiers did not feel any personal blame since they were simply taking orders. It can happen in any society and we should all be aware of the dangers of authority.
Book Response:
I found this book and the experiment it explains incredibly interesting. I learned about the Milgram experiment in a psychology class my freshman year, and I was very excited when I found out we were going to read this book for this class. Of course at first everyone is appalled at how many people would shock another person with lethal amounts of electricity just because they were told to. After a while it does not seem all that unusual when it is thoroughly explained in this book.
There have been many times where I have heard a story from someone, and I immediately thought their actions were terrible and how I would have handled it better. The fact of the matter is I have no way of knowing how I would react unless I was in the exact same situation. This experiment is one of those situations. We always think of ourselves in a positive light in theoretical situations. Small differences in situations can change a person's thought process and actions dramatically. The amount of detail the experimenters used in the Milgram experiment to keep every test the same is incredible. I am one of the people that would want to know how I would do in this experiment for my own personal knowledge about who I am.
Everyone agrees it causes emotional strain on the subjects. It clearly does to the mass majority of subjects. Does that make it unethical? Maybe. I believe that brief emotional strain is worth the large amount of insight gained from the experiment. Both for the individual and society as a whole. The ends justify the means since the means is much less than the ends in my opinion. I also believe that experiments should not deceive subjects which this experiment clearly does. In this particular experiment, deceite must be used. The only case, in my opinion, that deceite should be used is when there is absolutely no other way to run the experiment. A pre-experiment brief with the subject would greatly effect the outcome of the experiment making the the entire project useless.
This book should be a required read to everyone. If everyone was aware and would then hopefully take responsibility of their actions even if it is an order from a respected authority. Atrocities such as the ones taken place in so many wars could have been stopped.
Chapter 15, Epilogue: The last chapter was used to tie all the other chapters together. Dr. Milgram uses the Vietnam War where examples of soldiers under a clear authority committing atrocities happened, but many soldiers did not feel any personal blame since they were simply taking orders. It can happen in any society and we should all be aware of the dangers of authority.
Book Response:
I found this book and the experiment it explains incredibly interesting. I learned about the Milgram experiment in a psychology class my freshman year, and I was very excited when I found out we were going to read this book for this class. Of course at first everyone is appalled at how many people would shock another person with lethal amounts of electricity just because they were told to. After a while it does not seem all that unusual when it is thoroughly explained in this book.
There have been many times where I have heard a story from someone, and I immediately thought their actions were terrible and how I would have handled it better. The fact of the matter is I have no way of knowing how I would react unless I was in the exact same situation. This experiment is one of those situations. We always think of ourselves in a positive light in theoretical situations. Small differences in situations can change a person's thought process and actions dramatically. The amount of detail the experimenters used in the Milgram experiment to keep every test the same is incredible. I am one of the people that would want to know how I would do in this experiment for my own personal knowledge about who I am.
Everyone agrees it causes emotional strain on the subjects. It clearly does to the mass majority of subjects. Does that make it unethical? Maybe. I believe that brief emotional strain is worth the large amount of insight gained from the experiment. Both for the individual and society as a whole. The ends justify the means since the means is much less than the ends in my opinion. I also believe that experiments should not deceive subjects which this experiment clearly does. In this particular experiment, deceite must be used. The only case, in my opinion, that deceite should be used is when there is absolutely no other way to run the experiment. A pre-experiment brief with the subject would greatly effect the outcome of the experiment making the the entire project useless.
This book should be a required read to everyone. If everyone was aware and would then hopefully take responsibility of their actions even if it is an order from a respected authority. Atrocities such as the ones taken place in so many wars could have been stopped.
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