posted 03-14-2002 01:16 AM               

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Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with the way this experiment was designed. In fact, I’d like to see this experiment re-run to see if there are any differences between the way different subgroups respond to authority – for example, by gender, age, class, even country of residence, etc. Is one group much more likely to respect authority than others? Is there a measurable difference in the way American subjects respond, as opposed to say, European or Asian subjects?

Speaking of culture, one of the things I find funny about American culture is that despite all our talk about individualism (rugged or otherwise) most of us seem to be constantly in search of some authority figure to tell us that what we’re doing is OK. Whether that be a doctor, boss, parent, law officer, or celebrity. We love having someone or something else justify our decisions. That authority figure doesn’t even have to be a figure at all, it can just be an idea or perceived set of criteria. For example, how many people rush out to see moves they would have otherwise not cared about simply because they’ve been nominated for Academy Awards? How many people rushed out to buy CD’s that won Grammys two weeks ago? The list goes on and on.

posted 03-14-2002 01:17 AM               

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I’m curious about how Milgram chose the subjects for his experiment. Was there a screening process, or did he just take whoever volunteered? I think the veracity of his results hinge on that question. Who was he looking for in the experiment? Was he looking for a reliable cross-section of society? Would the results be different in an affluent suburb than they would in a depressed inner city? Would they be different today than when the experiment was originally conducted? Would they be different with women than with men? With blacks than with whites? With people who were abused as children than with people with relatively healthy childhoods? I could ask these questions all day.

The point is not that Milgram’s experiment is inherently flawed, though it may be; I don’t know. (Because of its special place in the history of psychological research, I assume it’s pretty on-target.) The point is that there are any number of reasons why people might choose to obey or disobey authority, and the next step after Milgram is to find out what those reasons are. I spent 12 years in Catholic school and lived my high school years in a pretty strict, intimidating household, and thus have a programmed dislike of authority figures. While I generally manage to make do in situations where I’m not the boss, I’d never make it in the Army, and it’s not inconceivable that I’d flip out on the experimenter if placed in one of Milgram’s "teacher" positions.

After years of using college-inspired critical thinking skills and interacting with authority figures that understood the basics of human interaction (which is more than I can say for Sister Joseph Timothy in the first grade), I’ve come to a point where I think my balance of trust and skepticism toward authority is a pretty good one. I’m not sure, however, how I’d describe that point, or how I’d tell someone to go about reaching it. Dave asks plenty of good questions; I think the two best questions to conclude with deal with how we determine what is a healthy respect for authority, and how to go about achieving it.

posted 03-14-2002 02:08 AM               

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I'll be the first to admit that I can't think of any other way Milgram could've conducted his study. However, there's something about it that I've always found...well, trying to rein in my natural gut reaction here and be a bit rational...I've always found it distasteful.

The experiment shouldn't be enough to put its subjects into therapy. Now what I'd like to see is a study of the control subjects in the tests - did they have even a moment's doubt about their part in this?

I can't put my finger on it, and as I've already said, it troubles me that I can't think of a better way to get the behavioral data and responses demanded by such a study. But something has always nagged away at me, in the back of my mind, that there was something insidious about the method.

It could be something that I might file away in my own admittedly small worldview as a necessary evil. But to this day, I still question the degree of the alleged necessity.

posted 03-20-2002 10:39 PM               

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Milgram drew from as diverse a pool as he could put together in 1960s New Haven; I'm still trying to get figures on any of the re-doings of the experiment that have been done over the years.

I don't know if this addresses any of your concerns, Earl, but it wasn't Milgram's intent to traumatize anyone. Like I mentioned, he expected the subjects to refuse to proceed when they realized they were harming the 'victim.' Although there is one interesting point -- the version I described was not actually the very first version. According to Milgram's book, they initially didn't have any of the screaming or protesting -- they just had the switches marked with a descriptive legend: 'Very Strong Shock - Intense Shock - Extreme Intensity Shock - Danger: Severe Shock - XXX.' Nearly everyone just went to the end and administered the shocks up to 450 volts. It wasn't until you made the consequences of obedience so clear and so obvious that you had even a significant minority refusing to obey.

And this might sound flip, but I don't mean it thats way: I actually feel better about anyone who went to therapy as a result of their participation in this, and I say that based on my own personal experiences. It seems like for many people, it takes something almost traumatic for them to really honestly look at themselves, acknowledge their faults, and work to improve them. I'm not saying I think we should routinely traumatize people, but there's a balance to be found.

posted 08-26-2002 01:31 AM               

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I suppose this is one case where I'm not really looking at Milgram's work academically, but from a standpoint of honesty. If I step back and think about it, there's always at least a little bit of manipulation, or perhaps simply withholding of information or resources, for the test group of any such test.

I always knew that was where I went wrong in life. The control group gets all the goodies.

posted 03-26-2003 11:36 PM               

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Actually, let me bring the current context up in a somewhat less flip fashion. There are those who think that the current military action does not constitute a just war. That means, at some level, these opponents think this war is unethical or immoral. Do you think these opponents are bound to consider the soldiers themselves to be unethical? Should these opponents be demanding or encouraging soldiers to disobey orders?

Having set up the hypothetical, I'll answer for myself. I do think this war, right now, is immoral. But I don't hold individual soldiers responsible. Soldiers don't have the luxury of considering things the way we do, and their effectiveness and way of being is based on being able to trust the commands of their superiors. Before I'd expect a soldier to disobery direct orders, I'd expect there to be glaring, obvious evidence that the order is wrong, and there's more than enough ambiguity in this situation to say that that's not the case. I place the moral responsibility for their actions solely in the hands of their commanders.

posted 03-28-2003 12:37 AM               

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Reading that over again, I just want to make it clear that the joke was: I used to use the word ditto before Rush's people co-opted it.

Don't think it's likely, but just in case it sounded like there was some implied message there, there wasn't.

posted 04-04-2003 09:37 AM               

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I got the line (and chuckled), but thanks for the clarification.

This has definitely been one of the tougher ethical questions posed by this whole sad turn of affairs. Figuring out how to support the troops while disapproving of the actions they have been ordered to take feels like walking a psychological tight rope without a net.