The Milgram Experiment - What Would You Do? Quiz

Answer: Yale University

These experiments were carried out in the basement of Yale University by psychology professor Stanley Milgram, who wanted to test the limits of obedience to authority, even when or if obedience went against their judgment, belief or conscience. Milgram subsequently wrote a paper based on the experiment in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology and also wrote a book called "Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View." His experiment inspired a number of re-enactments.

Answer: 1961

The experiment started in July 1961. In the experiments there was an experimenter, teacher and learner. The experimenter and learner were both part of the experiment and the teacher was the test subject. The experimenter and teacher were placed in a room together and the learner was placed in a separate area where the teacher could not see them but could hear them.

The teacher knew that the learner was strapped into a chair and would receive electric shocks for incorrect answers to questions. The learner was to give these shocks every time they heard an incorrect answer and to increase the amount of voltage for every incorrect answer.

Answer: The Holocaust

Milgram started his experiments three months after the trial of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Milgram was interested in the study of the psychology of genocide and the question that people often ask: "If you were in Nazi Germany, what would you have done?" He was interested in trying to find out what is actually behind the apparent willingness to carry out or go along with terrible acts.

He was looking specifically at out how influential and controlling the impulse to simply follow orders is.

Answer: yes

Human death most commonly happens between one hundred and two hundred volts of alternating current although death has occurred with a voltage as low as forty-two. In this experiment, no-one was actually hurt. The test subjects (teachers) however, believed that they were giving shocks to the learner as every time they pressed a button on a generator, a sound would play to suggest that a shock was given.

In addition to that, there were pre-recorded sounds played, such as asking the teacher to stop and banging noises suggesting distress.

Answer: Zero to three

Although a very small sample size, fourteen people were asked prior to the experiment what they thought the outcome would be and they predicted that between zero and three (an average of just over one) of the test subjects would administer the highest available voltage. One aspect that may have influenced their guesses was the fact that they knew that the generator the subjects used not only had the number of volts listed but also written signs showing "Slight Shock to Danger: Severe Shock" as the voltages increased.

Answer: Sixty-five percent

The results of the experiment were shocking (pardon the pun). Sixty-five percent of the test subjects administered the maximum voltage to their learner. Every single teacher administered at least three hundred volts to their learner. It was obvious during the experiment that the subjects were uncomfortable with their task. They showed outward signs of being stressed such as sweating or biting their lips and questioned the experimenter about continuing. The experimenter, wearing a white scientific coat as the symbol of his authority, responded in various ways to the teacher:

"Please continue or Please go on."
"The experiment requires that you continue."
"It is absolutely essential that you continue."
"You have no other choice; you must go on."

The test subjects were free to leave at any time but the majority did not.

Answer: "Some Thoughts on Ethics of Research: After Reading Milgram's' Behavioral Study of Obedience.'

There was a fair bit of backlash against this experiment from a couple of perspectives. The first was the harm it might pose to subjects who thought they might be harming another person. The subjects visibly showed signs of being uncomfortable and anxious throughout their participation and so the ethics of such a study was questioned.

This was discussed in the paper. The other side of the coin though is the validity of the results. There have been some questions as to whether subjects actually believed they were harming another person and so did not act as they might in a real-life situation.

Answer: Solomon Asch

In the early 1950s Solomon Asch conducted a number of fascinating experiments on conformity. In these experiments, he studied the effects of groups on individuals and whether the group influenced the opinion or beliefs of the individual. Milgram was inspired by the Asch conformity experiment and the notion that group behavior becomes the model for the individual.

The other theory is the agentic state theory. This suggests that the individual believes that they are acting as a tool or instrument on behalf of someone else. Because of this, they are not to blame for their actions.

Answer: Obedience did not significantly differ

Milgram conducted a number of variations on the original experiment. In experiment number eight, he used all female participants in the role of teacher and found no significant difference in terms of results but did find that the women seemed to suffer more stress.

In other variations, Milgram brought the teacher and learner physically closer together and in one case, had the teacher hold the arm of the learner on a shock plate. In this variation, thirty percent of the subjects still administered the full voltage.

In another variation, the experimenter was on the phone with the teacher instead of in the same room and in this variation, only twenty-one percent of the subjects administered the full shock and some lied and pretended that they were continuing the experiment when in fact they weren't.

Answer: To a puppy

There have been several replications of the experiment. As far as I know, no children or elderly have ever had to go through an experiment like this. There is a very famous Stanford prison experiment that took place in 1971 with Stanford university students that was intended to study the effects of role-playing and social expectation. Sadly, puppies have been used for a replication of this experiment. Charles Sheridan and Richard King felt that the results of the original experiment were skewed because people must've known they weren't harming actual other people so they chose a "fluffy, cute puppy" and had subjects administer real (but apparently harmless!) shocks to the puppy.

In that case, seven out of thirteen male and all thirteen female subjects administered maximum dosage, although some of the subjects openly wept while doing it.