[LINK] Behind the Shock Machine: book reexamining Milgram obedience experiments

Interesting. I have to resist the urge to dismiss this (because finding out about the experiment felt like such an amazing revelation, you don't want to think it's all made up).

I think it's quite possible that the results were exagerrated in that way people do with anecdotes: simplified to hammer the point home and losing some of the truth in doing so. I don't know what the standards of accuracy were in psychological papers of the time, so it's unclear whether to take this as just unfortunate or evidence of dishonesty in the sense of breaking the unspoken protocols of the discipline. I'd be interested to hear what counted as 'coercing' people to press the button, though, and without coercion, I don't see how the distinction between 'obey command to press button' and 'don't' can be blurred as this suggests.

The 'reason to believe people saw through it' is weird: would like more detail.

But I also tend to distrust the author (at least as represented in this editorial) because of a later section which seems very shoddy thinking to me:

"Gradually, Perry came to doubt the experiments at a fundamental level. Even if Milgram’s data was solid, it is unclear what, if anything, they prove about obedience. Even if 65 percent of Milgram’s subjects did go to the highest shock voltage, why did 35 percent refuse? Why might a person obey one order but not another? How do people and institutions come to exercise authority in the first place? Perhaps most importantly: How are we to conceptualize the relationship between, for example, a Yale laboratory and a Nazi death camp? Or, in the case of Vietnam, between a one-hour experiment and a multiyear, multifaceted war? On these questions, the Milgram experiments—however suggestive they may appear at first blush—are absolutely useless."

This seems to be a case of rejecting a very powerful and useful bit of information because it doesn't answer a whole series of additional, arbitarily chosen questions. If we can show that penicillin can stop infection, this is useful. And it isn't 'doubted at a fundamental level' by saying

'Even if 65 percent of patients got better, why did 35 percent not? Why might one infection respond, and not another? How do people get infected in the first place? Perhaps most importantly: How are we to conceptualize the relationship between, for example, a London hospital and a battlefield? Or between an urgent case of gangrene and a chronic illness slowly becoming more life-threatening? On these questions, the Fleming experiments—however suggestive they may appear at first blush—are absolutely useless."

These should be interesting new angles to explore, not reasons to ignore the original study.

I'll point out that for any criticism to cast meaningful doubt on the results of the Milgram Experiment, it would also have to be applicable to the replication.

Weren't there tons of replications of the experiment? My impression was everyone was shocked at the initial outcome of the study, and rushed to replicate.

Googled, and yep. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment#Replications_and_variations

Reads like hair-splitting over a rather unimportant detail.

The interesting thing about the outcome is that most people are rather easily talked into doing things they wouldn't otherwise do. Not that specific sentences work on exactly 65% of participants - a rate that would undoubtedly depend to the appearances of the experimenter, depth of their voice, and so on.

edit: Somewhat amusingly, the "ai box experiment" seem to have had 60% victory rate, though the sample size is way too small.

I think a much more interesting take on Milgram is one presented by Radio Lab in which it's put forth that people were particularly likely to obey due to the spirit of scientific exceptionalism during that era. Science had won WWII, science was responsible for our prosperity and was making life better for everyone on earth, and they were helping that cause. It was idealism and optimism that prompted people to go beyond their own bounds in the pursuit of the greater good, rather than cynicism and obedience.

Also of note was that everyone who continued all the way to the final shock never heard the final prompt (“You have no other choice, teacher; you must go on”). Anyone who did hear that prompt would instantly fight back and refuse to continue. Being told you have no other choice was apparently counter-productive and would trigger resistance.

In an episode of the Freakonomics podcast they talked about similar skepticism about Phillip Zimbardo's Stanford prison guard experiments. The 'guards' felt subtly encouraged to become abusive to the 'prisoners'.