ABSTRACT

The experiments that Stanley Milgram reports in Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View sought to subject the study of obedience to a controlled scientific process. Milgram wrote, "We must create a situation in which one person orders another person to perform an observable action and we must note when obedience to the imperative occurs and when it fails". Milgram devised a situation in which ordinary adults were asked to inflict severe—possibly lethal—pain on fellow human beings. By obeying such orders, his volunteers would reveal the extent to which ordinary people will obey an authority when it means hurting a stranger. Participants in the Holocaust were obeying the authority of Germany's Nazi government; the experiment's counterpart was the scientific authority of the experimenter, who was introduced as a research psychologist. Milgram's volunteers were led into giving what appeared to be near-lethal levels of electric shock by a series of gradually increasing steps.