Book Reading #10 - Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 2: Obscura

Summary:

In this chapter, the author Lauren Slater describes Stanley Milgram and his experiment about obedience to authority.

The Experiment:

In 1961, Stanley Milgram, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale University wanted to study how people succumb to authority and become willing to perform atrocities. He performed his experiment in the night, in a small shady room. There were three people involved in each experiment - the volunteer, who was given the role of the teacher and two actors paid by Milgram, one of whom played the role of the learner and the other wore a white coat and instructed the teacher (volunteer) with orders. The learner was instructed to sit in an electric chair and the teacher was asked to question the learner. If the learner made a mistake, the teacher was advised to administer him an electric shock. The intensity of the electric shock went up with the number of mistakes. It started with 15V electric shock for the first mistake and went up to 450V. As the intensity went up, the teacher could see the learner in agony when the sock was administered as a punishment. If the teacher wanted to stop, he wasn't allowed to and was insisted to continue by the guy in the white coat. However, the teacher did not know that the electric generator and the electric chair are fake and the two guys are paid actors who worked for Milgram.

The Findings:

Sixty five percent of us, when faced with credible authority, will follow the orders to the point of lethally harming the person. Catholics were more obedient than Jews, but there were no concrete personality traits that separated the obedient from defiant.

Importance of the study:

The power if Milgram's experiment lies in the great gap between what we think about ourselves and who we really are. How any normal person can become a killer if he finds himself in a place where killing is called for. The studies raised a research question that which qualities and personality traits make a man autonomous. Many participants in the study claimed that the experiment proved to them how powerless and vulnerable they were and that the experiment changed their lives. It motivated them to take control of the situation.

Discussion:

I was totally intrigued by Stanley Milgram's personality, his experiment and his findings. Some people consider his actions to be controversial, or even brutal but I share a somewhat different opinion. Many great inventors and scientists including Newton were surrounded by controversies, but, I think we should focus on their contributions rather than highlighting the controversies. According to the utilitarian theory of ethics, Milgram did not do anything that was ethically wrong. He did not physically harm or injure any one nor did he force anyone to participate in his experiment.

This article got me thinking - "if I was the one playing the teacher in that room in the basement, what would I do? Would I be obedient or defiant?". However, answer to this question can not be hypothesized unless we are ourselves in that situation surrounded by the same shady environment that surrounded the participants. There is no way I can answer this question sitting on my couch with my legs crossed, while enjoying this wonderful book and sipping a cup of tea.