Experiment #72 · Scientific experiment

Milgram's Obedience Experiments

Ordinary people administer lethal shocks under instruction

Stanley Milgram · 1961 · Social psychology

First published: S. Milgram, "Behavioral Study of Obedience", *Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology* 67 (1963): 371–378.

A majority of ordinary volunteers, instructed by a white-coated experimenter, administer what they believe are lethal electric shocks to a stranger.

Milgram's subjects were instructed to administer increasingly severe (apparent) electric shocks to another subject (an actor) who responded with cries of pain and eventual silence. Despite distress, 65% of subjects in the baseline condition continued to the maximum 450-volt level on instruction from a white-coated experimenter. The findings, conducted in the wake of the Eichmann trial, dramatised the situational pressures producing ordinary participation in atrocity. Subsequent reanalyses (Reicher, Haslam, Perry) have qualified the standard narrative — many subjects resisted, the protocols varied in coercion — but the headline result remains a foundational reference for moral psychology and the social construction of agency.

Formulation

Subject (teacher) administers shocks to "learner" (actor) for wrong answers, escalating from 15V to 450V. Experimenter in lab coat instructs continuation despite subject distress. Baseline result: 65% continue to maximum. Variants (different proximity to learner, different authority figures) shift compliance rates substantially.

Compare this experiment

Dimensions Engaged

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Observer

Targets Observer · Agency: how much of moral behaviour traces to the agent's character vs to the situational structure?

Responses — How Schools Engage

Affirms / takes the bait 4

Naturalism

A foundational empirical demonstration of situationism: behaviour is heavily shaped by structural features of the social context, not just character. The implication for moral and political theory is far-reaching.

Pragmatism

Confirms a pragmatist insight: moral capacity is sustained by institutional and communicative practices. Where those practices are subverted (lab coats, scripts), behaviour shifts dramatically.

Reformed / Calvinist Theology

Empirically confirms the doctrine of total depravity: human beings are predisposed to participate in evil structures absent grace and counter-formation.

Liberation Theology

Vindicates structural readings of evil: oppressive systems are sustained not by exceptional malice but by the ordinary obedience of ordinary people. Implication: structural transformation, not just personal conversion.

Reframes the question 2

Existentialism

Many subjects did resist; the headline figure obscures the moral diversity of responses. Authentic agency was possible — Milgram's subjects who refused are the more interesting cases.

Analytic Metaphysics / Logical Atomism

A canonical empirical input for moral responsibility theorising; situationist findings have been used (Doris) to argue against virtue ethics and (Sreenivasan) to qualify but rescue it.