Obedience to Authority

Obedience to Authority

Stanley Milgram

Summary:

Chapter 1: The Dilemma of Obedience. Chapter one serves as an introduction to the book. Milgram discusses obedience, describing it as a basic and important element in the structure of social life. He also gives a brief introduction to the basics of his experiment, and the motivations behind it (Germany), and some of the results obtained from the experiment.

Chapter 2: Method of Inquiry. In chapter two, Milgram gives a detailed description of each component in the experiment. Participants were recruited from ads and mail advertising; they were required to be 'adults,' not high school or college students. He describes the learning task, which was the supposed objective of the experiment. Also, a detailed description of the shocking procedure and machines, as well as how the experiment would take place and evolve.

Chapter 3: Expected Behavior. In order to determine the expected behavior from people participating in the experiment, Milgram put together groups of people to whom he "explained" the procedures (he omitted the fact that the learner was an actor). Majority of people indicated or predicted that subjects would not go through the complete experiment, which they would stop when the learner indicated he wanted out of the experiment.

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Chapter 4: Closeness of the Victim. Milgram describes different ideas that affected the variation of obedience depending on the proximity of the victim. Overall, if the victim was remote from the subject, the subject was more likely to go through the experiment than if the victim was in the same room with the experimenter and the subject.

Chapter 5: Individuals Confront Authority. In this chapter, Milgram discusses some forces that affect the subject's responses, such as background and interaction with the experimenter. He then continues to relate the accounts of various subjects participating in the experiments.  

Chapter 6: Further Variation and Controls. Variations made from experiments 5-11 are described in this chapter: adding a heart condition to the victim, changing personnel (personality), how close the experimenter is to the subject, how women impact the experiment, the victim's limited contract; the institutional context (whether related to Yale or not), and whether the subject would give the same shocks if he had the option to choose the shock level. 

Chapter 7: Individuals Confront Authority II. Chapter structure similar to chapter 5. Milgram describes the interactions and how the experiment proceeded with different people.

Chapter 8: Role Permutations. Milgram questions whether the role each individual plays and how it is played would affect subject responses. For example, the experimenter was always the authority, the teacher was the subject, while the learner was the victim. In experiments 12-16 variations to these roles were changed. Hierarchy in authority is very important in choosing which authority to follow.

Chapter 9: Group Effects. Milgriam differentiates between conformity and obedience. Conformity comes from peers, the person is not proud or does not easily admit they have conform to a situation. Obedience comes from authority, hierarchical authority, the person will easily admit they committed an act because they were being obedient and following orders. Milgram describes the variations in experiments 17 and 18 (group experiments), as well as its results.

Chapter 10: Why Obedience? - An Analysis. In this chapter Milgram discuses reasons why obedience happens.How hierarchical models can explain and affect obedience, as wells as the variability involved. At the end of this chapter Milgram introduced the agnetic shift, when a person shifts from autonomy to following other individual's wishes.

Chapter 11: The Process of Obedience: Milgram discusses more in depth the agnetic state, trying to explain the antecedent conditions, consequences and binding factors surrounding it. Some of the antecedent conditions include mention are family, institutional setting (school), rewards. He also goes in detail about the binding factors, which keeps the individual in the agnetic state.

Chapter 12: Strain and Disobedience. In this chapter, Milgram explains the effect of strains and strain-resolving mechanisms have on whether the subject obeys or disobeys. When the biding factors are greater than the net value of restrain, subjects obey; when less, they disobey. He goes on by defining strain, sources of strain and techniques that attempt to resolve it. 

Chapter 13: An Alternative Theory: Is Aggression the Key?: Milgram makes note of the alternative theory of why subjects were capable of shocking the learner. The theory was aggression; the teacher wanting to hurt the learner. Milgram explains how this was studied in a similar experiment, but he assures that this is not the cause, but the relationship to obedience teachers had.

Chapter 14: Problems of Method: In this chapter, Milgram answers to three questions that were raised as critics of the experiment. In his answers he refutes any opposing viewpoints, and restates his. The critics question whether the subjects of the experiment correctly represented society at large, whether they did not believe shocks were real since the beginning, and if it is possible to generalize the results to real life experiences.

Summary:

This book seems to be very easy to read. Since we had already read a chapter about his experiments in the Opening Skinner's Box book, I already had an idea what his experiments were about. There is so much detail about his reasoning behind the experiment, the methods he used for it, and results about it. I was really surprised to learn how they prepare for the experiment, how they came up with the expected results; it wasn't just from what they believe, but what society believes. The more he discussed the experiments the more I thought about myself, and what I would do in that situation.

In the second part of this book, Milgram carries out the analysis of the experiment and his results. Milgram makes an important distinction between conformity and obedience. I think many people, including myself, would believe that if someone is instructing you to do something you don't want to, and try to resist but are not capable of breaking off, then this person is conforming to the authority's wishes. However, Milgram describes this situation to one of obedience, and not conformity.

There is a very complex explanation on how obedience is carried out, and it is really interesting to realize how so many factors are involved in the process. How he defined the agnetic shift and state. Even though, Milgram was vague with his definitions of strain and buffers (in my opinion), he was still able to explain and demonstrate their effect over obedience.

Even though aggression maybe one of the first things people thinks about when learning about this experiment, Milgram was able to prove with one of his experiments this is not such a case. However, I believe that in an extended situation such as Nazi Germany, individuals inflicting pain in other people may become aggressive the longer they stay in this situation.

I really liked the last chapter. Even though I thought this chapter was going to be a summary, it was more like a rebuttal chapter where Milgram is able to prove wrong opposite views and critics about his experiments. However, it would have been good if he had considered the effects the experiment had on the subjects. One of the first things one thinks about when learning about the experiment is cruelty and how subjects may think of themselves after they have participated in the experiment.