Psychology
Milgram's obedience experiments, reexamined
12 min
The famous study suggesting ordinary people would deliver painful shocks on command shaped how we think about authority — but newer analysis of the archives complicates the story. What the experiments really showed.
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Show notes
Obedient participants violated scientific protocols in nearly half of their actions to make shocking more bearable.
Participants used procedural shortcuts like rushing questions or mumbling voltage levels to distance themselves from the harm.
Disobedient subjects followed the experimental rules more strictly than those who delivered the maximum shocks.
Physical distress markers like seizures and nervous laughter indicate that participants believed the shocks were real.
Experimenters prioritized the delivery of shocks over scientific data by allowing participants to ignore standardized protocols.
The five-step recursive sequence created bureaucratic momentum that framed the participant as a component of a machine.
In this episode
- 1Intro1 min
- 2The Five-Step Protocol2 min
- 3The Breakdown of Science3 min
- 4The Paradox of Disobedience3 min
- 5The Question of Belief2 min
- 6Outro1 min
Sources
- Audio tapes reveal mass rule-breaking in Milgram's obedience experiments
- Milgram’s Infamous Shock Studies Still Hold Lessons for Confronting Authoritarianism | Scientific American
- Milgram Obedience Experiments: What The Yale Archives Actually Show | Atticus Li
- From legitimate to illegitimate violence : Violations of the experimenter's instructions in Stanley Milgram's “obedience to authority” studies
- Credibility and Incredulity in Milgram’s Obedience Experiments: A Reanalysis of an Unpublished Test
- Audio tapes challenge Milgram obedience findings - Boing Boing
- Questioning authority: new perspectives on Milgram's ‘obedience’ research and its implications for intergroup relations
- Beyond Obedience: Social Role Normativity and the Misinterpretation of Milgram
- [PDF] Can we still use Milgram's 'Obedience to Authority' Experiments to ...
- Milgram's subjects were never aligned - by Hollis Robbins
- The repertoire of resistance: Non-compliance with directives in Milgram's ‘obedience’ experiments
- Why Ordinary People Do Terrible Things | Psychology Today United Kingdom
- BEHAVIORAL STUDY OF OBEDIENCE
- ‘Please Continue’: Implicit Communication and the Experimenter's Interventions in Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority Series
- Milgram experiment
- Why Ordinary People Do Terrible Things | Psychology Today Canada
- The Frequency and Composition of Interpersonal Tension in Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority Series
- Acting otherwise: Resistance, agency, and subjectivities in Milgram’s studies of obedience
- Developing psychology’s archival sensibilities: Revisiting Milgram’s ‘obedience’ experiments.
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