Simpleology Blog

The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram by Dr. Thomas Blass does well to remind us of the controversial experiment that Milgram, a Yale University psychologist, conducted in the early 1960s.

Electric Consequences
The infamous Milgram experiment aimed to "measure the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience." To wit, the participants were told that the experiment was all about "exploring effects of punishment for incorrect responses on learning behavior."

The participants were tagged as "teachers" and they had to work with "learners" (who were, in fact, actors). The "teachers" were told to administer an electric shock of increasing intensity to a "learner" for each mistake he made during the experiment. They didn't know that the electric shock was actually bogus and that the "learners" would just pretend to feel pain.

In any case, the outcome was disturbing, as sixty percent of the "teachers" obeyed orders to punish the learner to the very end of the 450-volt scale. No subject stopped before reaching 300 volts.

Ideally, the participants should have reacted or downright refused when they were ordered to administer electric shock--but they didn't.

Blind Obedience
Ultimately, Milgram theorized: "Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority."

In 1974, Milgram went on to publish his findings in a book called Obedience to Authority: an Experiment View.

For his part, Blass expounds on Milgram's landmark experiment well and offers objective insights on his psyche. Then again, many readers will no doubt be transfixed by the explosive experiment, whose impact can still be felt today. If anything, Milgram's unnerving findings should remind us that while it's great to respect authority, we should still have a good sense of what's right or wrong. And, of course, we should have the courage to take a stand for what we believe in--even if everyone else just wants to follow orders.

Suggested Resource: The Milgram experiment is just one of the many mind-boggling psychological investigations found in the Catalog of Esoteric Psychological Lore (The Most Comprehensive Collection of Forbidden Psychological Tricks, Tactics, and Techniques Ever Assembled). Check it out now and learn all you can about how our minds work.