Milgram, Stanley (1933-1984), an American psychologist , became best known for his controversial studies on obedience. Milgram’s work offered important insights into how easily ordinary people can be compelled to violate basic moral principles. He conducted his experiments while a professor at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, in the 1960’s. Milgram is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of social psychology . Social psychology is the study of how a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other people.
Milgram designed his famous experiment to address the question of whether an ordinary person would obey orders from an authority figure to harm an innocent person. His research was inspired by the Holocaust , the systematic, state-sponsored murder of Jews and others by the Nazis during World War II (1939-1945). Milgram wondered if widespread participation in the atrocities of the Holocaust could be explained by what he called obedience pressures. To test this question, researchers commanded volunteers to push a button, which would administer painful electric shocks to an unseen person in another room. Unknown to the volunteer, the unseen person was a collaborator in the experiment and did not actually receive any shocks. The volunteers were commanded to continue administering shocks even when they heard sounds that indicated that the other person was in great pain. Most participants continued to obey the authority, administering shocks to the very end of the test period. This result demonstrated the power of obedience pressures.
Milgram’s work was controversial in many ways. Many of the participants in his experiment experienced much anxiety and stress as they decided whether to obey the commands, believing that they were inflicting pain on another person. These traumatic experiences raised serious questions about the ethical and legal responsibilities of psychological researchers. The experiment caused psychologists to call for many procedural changes within the field of psychology research.
Many psychology experts also question the relevance of Milgram’s experiment to the horrors of the Holocaust. The participants in the Milgram experiment showed reluctance to inflict harm on their victims. Historians and other experts point out that Nazi perpetrators were often enthusiastic in the commission of their crimes. Some psychologists argue that these situations involved two different psychological motives. In Milgram’s experiments, external pressures compelled people to administer shocks to others. Among Nazi perpetrators, many showed an internal readiness or willingness to participate in genocide .
Milgram was born on Aug. 15, 1933, in New York City. He studied at the City University of New York. He received his Ph.D. degree at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1960. In addition to his work on obedience, Milgram studied the popular “small world” idea, also known as “six degrees of separation.” This principle suggests that any person can be connected to any other person through a chain of no more than five acquaintances. To study this idea, he gave volunteers information about an individual, then asked them to mail a folder to an acquaintance who might have known that individual. He then calculated the average number of people between each volunteer and each target individual.
Milgram also developed what is known as the “lost-letter” technique. In this technique, researchers ask volunteers to help deliver a “lost letter” to the intended recipient. Volunteers are asked to help by passing the letter on to someone who might know the person. This trick enables researchers to study social connections. Psychology researchers have also used this technique to determine people’s attitudes towards different political groups or individuals. Milgram died on Dec. 20, 1984.
