CHAPTER 1-14 (full book)
Summaries:
In chapter 1 Stanley Milgram discusses about the concept of obedience and talks about the Nazi experimentation as an example of obedience. He addresses the question as to why people are obedient even when they know what they are doing is unethical. He discusses the goal of the famous Milgram's experiment - to explore the willingness of the people to obey the authority and under what circumstances they become disobedient.
In chapter 2 Milgram writes about what he did to perform the study. He talks about how they got participants, selection of the location for the experiment, the procedure of the experiment, the shock generator and instructions provided by the experimenter to brief the subject about the experiment, data collection process and user feedback.
In chapter 3 Milgram talks about the expected behavior and the predictions made by psychiatrists, professionals, students and middle-class adults. They thought that almost all subjects would refuse to obey the experimenter and that only a very small percentage of people, the mentally sick and sadistic people of the society would actually go all the way.
In chapter 4 Milgram provides data about the effect of proximity of the victim to the teacher. In Experiment 1 the teacher got no feedback from the victim except for the pounding on the walls at 300 volts. In Experiment 2 vocal protests were used. In Experiment 3 the victim was placed in the same room as the teacher. In Experiment 4 the victim only got shocked when he forced the learner's hand on a shock plate. He describes how proximity influences obedience.
In chapter 5 Milgram gives the details about several subjects and how they behaved. Milgram includes the data recorded from observations of the subject while the experiment was performed, information received during an interview after the experiment and information they gave in a survey months after the experiment.
In chapter 6 Milgram describes seven other experiments in detail. Some of the variations in the experiments include changing the location of the experiment, including women in the studies, using a contract (and its effect on responsibility), and having the subject to choose the shock level.
In chapter 7 Milgram provides data and information similar to what was presented in chapters 5 and 6. He mentions that one of the subjects was originally from Germany and was disobedient. She decided to stop at 210 volts. Milgram attributes her behavior to her exposure to Nazi propaganda when she says "we have already seen enough pain".
Chapter 8 provides information on six more experiments that Milgram performed. The only difference is that in these experiments he keeps changing certain attributes and factors of the experiment. In these experiments he changed the position - if the subject is delivering, receiving or ordering the shock and action - the conduct of the people in their positions to see how the results change.
In Chapter 9, Milgram discusses the effect of the group. He also discusses the difference between conformity and obedience. He states that obedience to authority occurs within a hierarchy while conformity is imitation but obedience is not. The cause of actions is explicit in obedience but implicit in conformity.
In chapter 10, Milgram no more talks about the observations from the experiments rather he starts talking about the analysis of the results. MIlgram tries to dig deep to find the causes of obedience. In this chapter he defines a new term - the agentic state, which is the condition that a person is in when he sees himself as an agent for carrying out another person’s wishes. He mentions that this state is the important discovery of their analysis.
In chapter 11 Milgram talks about the factors that influenced the subject before the experiment, like the family structure, upbringing, the institutional setting, and a reward system. He observes the subjects reactions during the experiment. The areas that he observed were the perception of the authoritative figure and the appearance of the authority figure..
Chapter 12 talks mainly about two things - disobedience and the strain experienced by the people. Milgram discusses sources of strain, things that help to cope up with the strain. He also mentions how people deal with strain through avoidance, denial and subterfuges. He also says that people in the experiment verbally disagreed with the authority and tried to make themselves feel better and reduce the strain. Common physical reactions were trembling and sweating and in some cases being disobedient by refusing to continue.
In chapter 13 Milgram talks about aggression. He also talks about soldiers and yet another experiment performed by by Buss and Berkowitz to investigate aggression.
In chapter 14 talks about the public criticisms about this experiment. These criticisms include - the people studied in the experiment were atypical. Some claim that the subjects didn’t actually believe they were administering real shocks. Some say that the findings cannot be applied outside the laboratory setting i.e. the results can't be generalized. Milgram addresses each of these in detail within the chapter. Author presents convincing arguments to each of these claims. He finally compares the findings of this experiment with the behavior of people influenced by authority in Nazi Germany.
In chapter 10, Milgram no more talks about the observations from the experiments rather he starts talking about the analysis of the results. MIlgram tries to dig deep to find the causes of obedience. In this chapter he defines a new term - the agentic state, which is the condition that a person is in when he sees himself as an agent for carrying out another person’s wishes. He mentions that this state is the important discovery of their analysis.
In chapter 11 Milgram talks about the factors that influenced the subject before the experiment, like the family structure, upbringing, the institutional setting, and a reward system. He observes the subjects reactions during the experiment. The areas that he observed were the perception of the authoritative figure and the appearance of the authority figure..
Chapter 12 talks mainly about two things - disobedience and the strain experienced by the people. Milgram discusses sources of strain, things that help to cope up with the strain. He also mentions how people deal with strain through avoidance, denial and subterfuges. He also says that people in the experiment verbally disagreed with the authority and tried to make themselves feel better and reduce the strain. Common physical reactions were trembling and sweating and in some cases being disobedient by refusing to continue.
In chapter 13 Milgram talks about aggression. He also talks about soldiers and yet another experiment performed by by Buss and Berkowitz to investigate aggression.
In chapter 14 talks about the public criticisms about this experiment. These criticisms include - the people studied in the experiment were atypical. Some claim that the subjects didn’t actually believe they were administering real shocks. Some say that the findings cannot be applied outside the laboratory setting i.e. the results can't be generalized. Milgram addresses each of these in detail within the chapter. Author presents convincing arguments to each of these claims. He finally compares the findings of this experiment with the behavior of people influenced by authority in Nazi Germany.
Discussion:
I had an idea of what this book is about after reading a chapter about Milgram's experiment in the book "Opening the Skinners box". However, in this book he talks about his experiment in minute detail. It was interesting to read how the results varied with varying different factors like location, proximity and gender of the subject. The experiments were very convincing and I don't believe with most of the claims mentioned in chapter 14 that criticize the experiment.
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