I imagine the Milgram subjects rationalized their button-pushing. But regardless I've always been pretty much stumped by the results he got. I admit to not having a good counterargument except, run the study fifty more times and see what happens. Has that study ever been replicated, or is it too famous to do so without bias? Those are "good" rationalizations [at least somewhat rational things to think, unlike "Arabs aren't people"], but are just that nonetheless. Maybe they make the CIA officers somehow "better" than the Milgramites, because the officers' reasons were better, but it doesn't make either of them right. It's hard to argue against the old "you aren't any better than they are" rebuttal. Human nature is murky and I don't have the time to devote to a real reply tonight (your email lies fallow as well -- I'll need a day or two more). Closing thought: a lot of people read summaries of this study today, or became aware it exists. Presumably, at least a few of them are in the CIA or thinking about joining the CIA. Most of them aren't going to quit, or stop pursuing their goal, or else the agency won't have any people in it in 2017. On the other hand, I and plenty of others wouldn't touch a career in the CIA with a ten-foot pole no matter what, not after this (and other things). What does that say about Milgram, and Guantanamo, and human nature? There have to be some people who wouldn't turn the voltage up (there were). They are allowed to be judgmental, I think.The subjects experienced considerable anguish, not unlike the CIA workers who were "profoundly affected" in August 2002. They had orders. Refusing to comply would likely affect their careers. They may have had reason to believe that they were saving lives by torturing a person. Torturing, yet not killing, a person who may have intended to harm and kill others. They were in hidden locations far from home, working for an organization known for keeping secrets, which discouraged them from talking about even their routine work with friends or family.
He left the lab to “check” on the learner, returning to reassure the teacher that the learner was OK. Instead of sticking to the standard four verbal commands described in accounts of the experimental protocol, Williams often abandoned the script and commanded some subjects 25 times and more to keep going. Teachers were blocked in their efforts to swap places with the learner or to check on him themselves. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2013/10/02/the-shocking-truth-of-the-notorious-milgram-obedience-experiments/ I've always been troubled by Milgram. I've never really dug into it, though. Dunno. An n of 40 involving two actors probably wouldn't be considered serious research today. There's something there, but I'm not sure how much... it's like the Kitty Genovese thing: something horrible about human nature is in there somewhere, but it's never quite what they say it is.In listening to the original recordings of the experiments, it’s clear that Milgram’s experimenter John Williams deviated significantly from the script in his interactions with subjects. Williams – with Milgram’s approval – improvised in all manner of ways to exert pressure on subjects to keep administering shocks.
The slavish obedience to authority we have come to associate with Milgram’s experiments comes to sound much more like bullying and coercion when you listen to these recordings.
Thank you for this important corrective. In my haste to make my point, I did not stop to ask if Professor Milgram may have had a reason — perhaps immortality in Psych 101 textbooks — for telling a vivid story. I am sympathetic to your oft-expressed belief in the fundamental goodness of human nature. My arguments on this site in favor of freedom and market solutions depend on people generally wanting to work together and get along. The idea that some Teachers wanted to trade places with the Learner is especially comforting and gives me hope that I might have performed better than Fred Prozi is said to. Nevertheless, as you have acknowledged, people are not always good. Atrocities happen. It seems to me that whenever someone does shock their neighbor, choke out a suspect, waterboard a stranger, disappear students, or annihilate a genotype, and these things happen in an organized, methodical way, there is a common element in the scene: a bully in a uniform. This is a generality, of course, and there are exceptions. But I think we should recognize that the greatest harms have occurred under the auspices of people exercising legal authority.
I voted for your mention of Milgram. We ignore his findings at our peril. There's no doubt that humans are much worse to each other when they can displace their responsibility for atrocities. I wonder what it's cost us to have this truly important aspect of human behavior canonized by someone whose methods were as sensationalist as Milgram's. I'm not entirely sure we've learned.