In 1961, Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment to test the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. Milgram’s goal was to examine justifications for acts of genocide during World War II and whether obedience to superiors played a role in allowing people to act against their morals.
In this experiment, 40 participants were selected to participate in an “experiment on memory and learning”. Each participant was paired with an actor who was pretending to be another participant in the experiment. There was also an “experimenter” actor dressed in a lab coat who was the authoritative figure. A rigged drawing determined that the real participant would be the “teacher” and the actor would be the “learner”.
The teacher and learner were taken into an adjacent room by the experimenter and the learner was strapped to a chair with electrodes that appeared to connect back to an electroshock generator in the other room. The teacher and learner were then separated so they could still communicate, but not see one another. The teacher was then instructed to ask the learner multiple-choice questions and the learner would press a button to indicate their response. If the answer was incorrect, then the teacher would administer a shock increasing in 15-volt increments for each wrong answer. The maximum shock possible would be after 30 incorrect answers at 450 volts which was labeled “Danger: Severe Shock”.
The learner actor was never actually harmed. With each increasing shock level, a pre-recorded sound would be played with increasing pain level. The learner would also make additional protests or bang on the wall. When the highest voltages were reached, the learner would make no noise. If a participant asked to stop the experiment, the experimenter had a list of authoritative statements that they would say to keep the teacher going.
Milgram found that 65% of participants continued to the highest voltage level of 450 volts and every participant continued to at least 300 volts. However, every participant paused to question the experiment at least once and were uncomfortable continuing.
This study showed that ordinary people are likely to follow orders given to them by authority, even to the extent of killing an innocent person. Personally, I have always been skeptical of those in authority. When voting, I feel the need to be aware of the influence a candidate could potentially have over their constituents, such as myself, and I try to choose a candidate with good character and morals that align with my own. I believe this study shows the importance of aspects of democracy such as voting, checks and balances, and the balance of power between branches of government. With authority divided into many different sections and layers, it eliminates the ability for a dishonest or immoral official to have enough influence to have their constituents act against their morals. As shown in the study, people will obey authority. So, as Americans, we are lucky to have a democracy that prevents overwhelming influence from one particular branch or person.