Stanley Milgram's Obedience Experiments

Would you continue to induce shock waves through someone’s body if they pleaded for their lives screaming “Let me out of here. My heart's bothering me. Let me out, I tell you. (Hysterically) You have no right to hold me here. Let me out!” (Milgram, 1965) You would hope that any decent human being would sympathise and realise that enough is enough. But Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiment found that an astonishing 26 out of 40 (Milgram, 1963) of your average, everyday American men would shock an innocent human being to the point of death even after hearing these pleads.

In 1963, psychologist Stanley Milgram wanted to investigate why millions of innocent people were slaughtered during World War II. The ideas of the massacres could have originated
Many of the participants were visibly distressed, showing signs of tension. It was observed that many participants were trembling, sweating, stuttering, laughing nervously, biting lips and digging fingernails into palms of hands and three participants had uncontrollable seizures. Milgram argued that these effects were only short term. Once the participants were debriefed and saw that the ‘learner’ was not harmed, their stress levels declined.
Many people think that Milgram didn’t give the participants a right to withdrawal because of the four verbal statements the experimenter gave. Milgram disagreed, stating that his actions were necessary and although the withdrawal was made difficult, it was still possible because 35% of participants had chosen to do so (Milgram, 1963).
Milgram’s experiment is known for being an atrocity as well as being one of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology. It proves that someone would hurt a fellow human rather than disobey an authority figure. A psychological study like this would never be allowed in most countries today. Milgram's contributions to psychology and society were remarkably numerous and he has made many astonishing contributions to the psychological society.
Reference list: APA (6th
(1963). Behavioral Study of obedience. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371-378. doi:10.1037/h0040525

This journal written by Stanley Milgram had a lot of facts and information useful for this task. This article had the information of the general procedure and method including the information of the subjects and the results of the experiment. This pdf also had data tables and I used one of them in my article.

Milgram, S. (1973). The perils of obedience. Harper’s, 247(1483), 1973.

This book explained a lot about why Milgram set up the experiment he did, it was because of the Germans slaughtering innocent people. This article also helped me gain a lot of knowledge and background information that I needed to write this article.

Milgram, S. (1965). Some conditions of obedience and disobedience to authority. Human relations, 18(1), 57-76.

Information on the methodology of the experiment and why Stanley Milgram decided to do this experiment.

Image References:

Photo of Stanley Milgram: (2017). August 15: The Shocking Stanley Milgram. Jewish currents, activist politics and art. Retrieved 19 February 2017, from: