Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View

by Stanley Milgram

This well-designed and brilliantly executed research study, reported in an unusually fascinating and very readable style, reveals the elusive and sometimes shocking conditions under which men obey authority regardless of the morality involved.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Science, Sociology, Philosophy, Politics, Social Science

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Dr. Stanley Milgram (Ph.D., Harvard University, Social Psychology, 1960) spent most of his career as a professor of psychology at City University of New York Graduate Center. While at Harvard, he conducted the small-world experiment (the source of the "six degrees of separation" concept); at Yale, he conducted the "Milgram experiment" on obedience to authority. He also introduced the concept of "familiar strangers."

He took a psychology course as an undergraduate at Queens College, New York, where he earned his Bachelor's degree in political science in 1954. He applied to a Ph.D. program in social psychology at Harvard University and was initially rejected due to lack of psychology background; he was accepted in 1954 after taking six courses in psychology. Most likely because of his controversial Milgram Experiment, Milgram was denied tenure at Harvard after becoming an assistant professor there, but instead accepted an offer to become a tenured full professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (Blass, 2004).

Milgram influenced later psychologists such as Alan C. Elms, who was his first graduate assistant on the obedience experiment.

Reviews

[Esteban del Mal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Science!

***

I like to tell people that my first religious experience was seeing the music video for Peter Gabriel's song Shock the Monkey. This experience, coupled with some subsequent churchgoing misadventures in my adolescence, is why I always have to suppress the desire to throw poop whenever I pass a church.

Hardly scientific, but it gets my point across: I don't do well with authority.

Stanley Milgram is a pioneer in social psychology. Why? Because he convinced people -- good, churchgoing people -- to shock other people, or at least led these people to believe that they shocked other people. They didn't, of course. We Americans aren't Nazis, after all.

Or, given the right conditions, are we?

Milgram, a Jew, came to his experiment by way of the holocaust. He didn't buy into the popular refrain that "it couldn’t happen here" (the pronoun "it" is substituted euphemistically for "holocaust" -- how much of social psychology, or any psychology, is linguistic?). And my suspicion is that this effort to undermine the conceit of American exceptionalism is what many (but not all) people objected to in his experiments. Sure, Milgram describes his test subjects as almost Dickensian caricatures: a welder has a "rough hewn face that conveys a conspicuous lack of alertness"; a social worker looks "older than his years because of his bald pate and serious demeanor"; a forty-year-old housewife is regarded as resembling "Shirley Booth in the film Come Back, Little Sheba"; and, most jarring, a black man, "born in South Carolina," upon hearing the first protests of his victim, "turns toward the experimentor, looks sadly at him, then continues."

What did you expect, Dr. Milgram? He's black and he was born in South Carolina. Of course he's sad and of course he's going to do what the white guy who is giving him a check says. Is THAT what they call science at Yale?

And how many of the graduate students working under Milgram felt uncomfortable with the study but stayed on because of the authority he exercised over them? One mustn't anger one's thesis advisor, lest one's career never get off the ground, right? And how many of the people that answered his misleading advertisement for test subjects did so for financial reasons? Milgram could have made do with Hannah Arendt's account of the concentration camp guard who answered the question about why he participated in the wholesale slaughter of innocent human beings with, "I had five years of unemployment behind me. They could do anything they wanted with me."

But then again, that is to rely on "those people" to make his case. America felt (and, sadly, still feels) itself exempt from history and needed (needs) a kick in the ass.

The data that are the result of these experiments is that kick. Americans, it turns out, are not the exception to the rule when it comes to doing what they're told by those in authority. They shock people to unconsciousness -- UNCONSCIOUSNESS -- even after repeated and agonized protests from the victim because someone they recognize as an authority figure told them to.

Abraham Lincoln’s "last best hope of earth" America? Meet Stanley Milgram's universal condemnation of the humanity with which it is comprised.

A valid concern with these experiments is that they damage the subjects by compelling them to participate in something they believe is harming another human being. I am simpatico, but then this is no worse than the things I’ve seen on, say, Scare Tactics. And how many among us are ever given such a chance to learn something about ourselves? Shouldn't you be grateful that you understand how the German everyman ended up doing what he did? And that you could do the same? Or would you rather remain blind to the fact and comfortable in your arrogance?

I told you a half-truth earlier in this review. Peter Gabriel and churches aren't the only reason I have a problem with authority. Another, more true, reason is my father and a lifetime of interaction with him.

My Dad is an anarchist.

Not the wild-eyed, bomb-throwing subversive of Haymarket Square fictions. Not the rogue pamphleteer a VW van tire away from prison. Not the post-punk, too-cool-for-the-room, bandanaed scourge of Seattle infamy.

Nope.

None of these stereotypes can do the man justice.

I've roamed San Francisco's bookstores, read Bakunin and voted for Nader, but I've never seen or heard tell of a greater enemy of the status quo than my Dad.

You see, Dad was drafted by the United States Army. And Uncle Sam knows the ingredients of a fine killing machine when it sees them: Dad was born with a rifle in his hands, comes from stout Tennessee woodsman stock and stands about 6'2".

Too bad for Uncle Sam, Dad knows a raw deal when he sees it.

They tried to break him down and build him back up the Army way, but Dad liked the man he'd become and wasn't having any of it. He disobeyed orders and regularly went missing. Still, somehow they saw fit to graduate him from basic training and sent him to Advanced Infantry Training (A.I.T.) despite his stubbornness. He fidgeted through it, raking up sharpshooter medals and instructor ire in the process (he led a group of conspirators which employed the unorthodox method of capturing an enemy officer and two underlings during war games by checkmating the opponents' fake guns and tactical surprise with a few ham-handed blows and some selective cursing).

What I would argue is a flair for improvisational leadership, thinking outside the box, the Army saw as insolence.

Dad's leash was shortened and he was denied transfers to cushier jobs that he was qualified for. He saw two years of rolling around in Washington mud ahead of him and it pissed him off.

Then one day, during routine inspection, his commanding officer, a lieutenant he had threatened with violence after this same officer had supervised the punishment which many felt resulted in the death of one of my father's squad mates, spilled the contents of Dad's foot locker about the barracks and proceeded to berate him for sloppiness. As the lieutenant bent-over to grab a piece of perceived contraband to emphasize his point, the man to whom I owe half of my genetic make-up kicked him in the ass.

Not just kicked. He broke the guy's tail bone.

Dad was subsequently court-martialed and relegated to trash man duties under military police supervision. He didn't mind. He had three squares a day and slept in a dry bed. When he didn't display any ambition to get out of his latest predicament, they unceremoniously threw him out of the Army.

Years later, through an amnesty program under the Carter Administration, he was able to shed the stigma of a Dishonorable Discharge. Yet his anarchic legacy lives on in a posterior that owes its rheumatism to the business end of a foot of a man who wouldn't kowtow to authority.

[Michael Perkins · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unfortunately the experiments for which both Milgram and Zimbardo made their names have turned out to be utter frauds....

https://www.psypost.org/2019/11/unpub...

https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/1744911...

more on the fake Stanford experiment in this short review....

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

[Emiliya Bozhilova · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Bulgarian review is first, the English translation follows it below



Някои считат, че трактатът на Сун Дзъ за изкуството на войната касае само победата и поражението. Сун Дзъ далеч не е толкова елементарен, и долният негов цитат не е от популярните, но доказва, че старият китаец прекрасно е разбирал природата и важността на [не]подчинението:

”Има пътища, които не бива да се следват;
войски, които не бива да се нападат;
градове, които не бива да се обсаждат;
позиции, които не бива да се оспорват;
заповеди на владетеля, които не бива да се изпълняват.”

Историята доказва, че съветът на стария военен почти никога не се спазва. Инквизицията, трийсетгодишната война, робството, избиването на индианците в двете Америки, нацизмът и концентрационните лагери, клането в Нанкин, Голодоморът, виетнамската война и афганистанската война са само малка част от примерите как Сун Дзъ се чете и тълкува избирателно, и как и досега навсякъде и винаги най-ценената човешка добродетел си остава подчинението. Във всяка йерархия, като авторитаризмът е крайната форма, подчинението се приравнява на морал, а оттам следва пълно освобождаване от отговорност за извършени действия. “Наредиха ми”, “изпълнявах заповеди/инструкции”, “направих го в името на родината/бога” или просто примиреното “ами то тука е така”.

Затова и експериментът (всъщност поредица от експерименти) на Стенли Милграм с унищожителна, елегантна, смразяваща простота и логика потвърждава вече известното. Мирни, почтени, благопристойни, трудолюбиви мъже и жени са абсолютно готови да изпълняват нареждания в ущърб на друг човек, подавайки му (в случая фалшиви, но те не знаят) електрошокове с усилващ се интензитет въпреки викове, молби и писъци. Просто вършат каквото им е наредено от водещия експеримента. И както споделя един от участниците на въпроса на съпругата си ами ако жертвата беше починала - “това не ме засяга, аз моята работа си я свърших.”



Ако някой си мисли, че е изключение - значи едва ли е такова. Над 60% е степента на подчинение - т.е. над 60% от участниците подават максимален електрошок, в някои локации дори 80%. И никой от тези високи “проценти” не чувства каквато и да е лична отговорност. Той/тя просто е вършил/а каквото са поискали авторитетите, те винаги знаят най-добре, а ако нещо се обърка - те да му мислят…

Без съобразяване, авторитети и групов режим обществото би се разпаднало. С твърде много подчинение и авторитаризъм, от друга страна, влизаме в страната на Оруел и 1984. Къде е границата? Както Стенли Милграм показва нагледно - малцина я знаят, и те са отхвърлени от системата като провокатори/ предатели/ невежи.

”Значителна част от хората правят това, което им се каже, независимо от естеството на постъпката и без ограничения на съвестта, стига да смятат, че заповедта идва от легитимен авторитет.”

Some believe that Sun Tzu's The Art of War concerns only victory and defeat. Sun Tzu is far from that simplistic, and the quote below—though not among his most famous—proves that the old master perfectly understood the nature and importance of [dis]obedience:

”There are roads which must not be followed;
armies which must not be attacked;
towns which must not be besieged;
positions which must not be contested;
commands of the sovereign which must not be obeyed.”

History proves that the old general's advice is almost never followed. The Inquisition, the Thirty Years' War, slavery, the genocide of indigenous peoples, Nazism, the Holodomor, and the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan are but a few examples of how Sun Tzu is read selectively. To this day, obedience remains the most prized human virtue. In any hierarchy—with authoritarianism as its extreme—obedience is equated with morality, leading to a total abdication of personal responsibility. "I was told to," "I was just following orders," or the resigned "that's just how things are here."

This is why Stanley Milgram's experiments, with their devastating, elegant, and chilling simplicity, confirmed what was already suspected. Ordinary, decent, hardworking men and women are perfectly willing to follow orders to the detriment of another person, administering (what they believe to be) increasingly intense electric shocks despite screams and pleas. They simply do as the authority figure directs. As one participant remarked when asked what if the victim had died: "That doesn't concern me; I did my job."



If anyone thinks they are the exception, they likely are not. The rate of obedience was over 60%—meaning over 60% of participants administered the maximum shock; in some locations, it reached 80%. None of these people felt personal responsibility. They were merely doing what authority requested; authority always knows best, and if something goes wrong—it’s on them.

Without cooperation and authority, society would crumble. Yet, with too much obedience and authoritarianism, we enter the world of Orwell's 1984. Where is the line? As Milgram vividly demonstrates—few know where it lies, and those who do are often rejected by the system as provocateurs or traitors.

”It is the extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority that constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.”

[Петър Стойков · Rating 5 out of 5]

Експериментът на Милграм е един от най-известните в историята на психологията - как под командата на "учен" в бяла престилка, стотици обикновени хора пускат електрически шокове на "доброволец" (той всъщност е актьор и не получава никакви шокове, но хората не знаят това) докато той припадне от болка. И продължават въпреки отчаяните му викове и гърчове - само защото някой им казва да го направят и въпреки че много от тях очевидно страдат, съпреживяват, треперят от ужас и т.н.

Изводите на Милграм за характера на човешката психика и по-специално за подчинението ни на авторитети са безценни за развитието на психологията. Изводите му в края на книгата относно еволюционните корени на психиката ни са изпреварили времето си с над петдесет години, защото еволюционната психология започва да се развива едва наскоро и в по-голямата част от академичната общност все още е анатема.

Книгата е написана от самия него в ясен и разбираем стил, а не в характерния за голяма част от психологията днес псевдонаучен брътвеж и описва основният експеримент, неговите вариации и изводите на учения от тях относно човешкото поведение.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stanley Milgram (1933-1984) made several groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of human behavior. He was a master of particularly inventive research: for instance, he devised the experimental method to investigate path lengths in social networks, establishing what is variously referred to as the "small world" effect, the Kevin Bacon effect, or "six degrees of separation".

He will always be remembered, however, as the man who conducted the “obedience studies”, a controversial series of tests performed at Yale in the early 1960s. These experiments investigated the degree to which people could be persuaded to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform cruel acts that conflicted with their personal conscience. The experiments were highly controversial, partly because of ethical questions raised by the study protocol, partly because the results were completely at variance with what psychologists had predicted.

The view of human behavior that emerges from the results of Milgram’s experiments is thoroughly depressing. As Milgram puts it, With numbing regularity, good people were seen to knuckle under to the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. It seems that obedience to authority is hardwired very strongly into the human psyche, so strongly that in many cases it overrides the normal restraints that prevent us from lapsing into barbarism. This conclusion and the experiments that supported it were harshly criticized when Milgram’s results first appeared. Subsequent work, such as Philip Zimbardo’s infamous Stanford prisoner study, and events such as the My Lai massacre, or the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraeb, has corroborated Milgram’s conclusions many times over, and has shown that they appear to remain invariant across different countries and cultures. The (very thin) silver lining is that, even as the participants in Milgram’s studies were demonstrating their repeated willingness to submit helpless strangers to (what they believed to be) near lethal electric shocks, they were doing so out of an exaggerated respect for “authority” and not, for example, because of some inherent latent streak of depravity that made them want to hurt the experimental subject.



Milgram Obedience Experiments "Victim"

In the book, Milgram gives an impressively clear account of the experimental objectives and procedures. For each of the 18 experiments in the series, main summary results are presented. Milgram includes summaries of subjects’ prediction of their own behavior – the enormous discrepancy between predicted and actual behavior is one of the most interesting aspects of these studies. Roughly 700 to 800 subjects participated in total (roughly 40 per experiment) – the vast majority were male, though one of the later protocols enrolled women only (women’s and men’s results were essentially similar). Individual narratives (transcripts of a subject’s comments during the experimental session) are included for about a dozen participants.

Final chapters of the book are given over to Milgram’s interpretation of the results. He also addresses some of the criticisms that were leveled against the experiments (the book was written ten years after completion of the research). My edition contains an introduction by Philip Zimbardo, author of the Stanford Prison experiment, written in 2009.

This is an extremely well-written account of an important series of experiments. The results are simultaneously engrossing and horrifying.

[Данило Судин · Rating 5 out of 5]

Для мене це найкращий нон-фікшн, прочитаний в 2021 році. Не думаю, що цього року прочитаю сильнішу та цікавішу книгу.
Крім того, доволі несподівано виявити, що експеримент Мілґрема переказують в урізаній формі. Викидають всю теоретичну частину, а залишають опис експерименту із загальним висновком "людина конформна по своїй природі".
Насправді, все складніше. По-перше, Мілґрем розрізняє покору та конформізм. По-друге, він аналізує чинники, які сприяють покорі. По-третє, він пропонує цікаву теорію про двоїсту природу людини: автономність проти стану агента.

І після цього тексту зрозуміло, чому Зімбардо свій "Ефект Люцифера" написав в 2000-х: в 1970-х книжка Мілґрема описувала ті ж висновки, тільки більш ґрунтовно.

П.С. В перекладі деколи трапляються люті ляпи, але загалом читається переклад легко

[☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ · Rating 5 out of 5]

How far are people ready to go in their submission to authority?
The answer was provided in this groundbreaking research, which has had tremendous effect on modern psychology.
Q:
...К несчастью, в 1984 году в возрасте 51 года он умер от сердечного приступа. А нам в наследие оставил замечательные идеи: начав преимущественно с подчинения авторитету, позже Милгрэм расширил научные интересы до урбанистической психологии, проблемы «маленького мира», шести ступеней сепарации, эффекта Сирано и т. д. При этом он всегда творчески сочетал методы. Стэнли Милгрэм был тонким психологом, умеющим увидеть новую парадигму, способную обнажить старые истины или помочь переосмыслить скрытые принципы действия. (c)

[Rich V · Rating 4 out of 5]

Were Nazi soldiers just following orders in WWII? How would civilians in the U.S. respond to demands from authority figures to perform seemingly immoral acts? Where does the "just following orders" response fall on the scale of moral behavior?

Milgram conducted an experiment in which individuals were asked to administer increasingly intense shocks to an unseen test subject in the next room, whenever the subject answered a question incorrectly. Some individuals refused to continue administering shocks at the first protest of pain from the test subject. Other individuals administered the shocks through concomitantly increasing screams of agony which - in the most severe cases - subsided abruptly into silence, indicating the real possibility that the test subject had died.

The notorious reveal, of course, was that the test subjects strapped to electrodes in the unseen room were actually part of the team conducting the tests, and that the individual administering the test was the unwitting test subject. More interesting, the moral scale that evaluated the test subject's conduct seemed less concerned with how far the test subject took the shocks then with how the test subject justified their decision to stop or continue. Fear of chastisement ranked at the low end of the moral scale that judged such explanations. Desire to help humankind by participating in worthwhile scientific experiments ranked at the high end.

Milgram's work is a watershed for reasons that other reviewers no doubt have explained. It also ushered in the era of full disclosure to test subjects. So, these days, unless Ashton Kutcher is the scientist in charge, chances are you will at least know who is being tested.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book on the famous/infamous series of experiments conducted at and near Yale in the early 60's (book published in 1974). As for many, I was exposed to Milgram in a college survey course but still had no idea of the 20-odd variations on his study alone, not counting replications around the world. The book is clear, concise, and well-written and with conclusions that are both revelatory and disturbing -- not least by engendering thoughts of what I might have done as a study subject.

It is interesting to contemplate and discuss this study from the viewpoint of 2015, as society has changed considerably from the pre-hippie sixties. The changes include of social norms, like ideas about socioeconomic class and gender (somewhat anyway), as well as an evolution in the ethics of scientific study (recall the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment study was only halted in 1972). Now a few more focused comments about the salient elements of this work:

1. Methodology -- highly rigorous with numerous study variations to weed out potential confounders, like proximity of the victim or substitution of experimenter as victim. One of the most compelling things about the book..

2. Conclusions -- again, these hold up well in my view and he makes full acknowledgement that correlation to Nazi Germany is not 1:1. I also found his explanation of the psychodynamic underpinnings of obedience within our social contract to be convincing although the focus on "cybernetics" in this regard gives the discussion a dated feel, at least to someone not directly involved in that discipline...

3. Ethics -- you could start a bar fight with this case! And I find myself squarely in the middle pole, seeing both sides of both sides. His "epilogue" defense on this issue is not entirely convincing, to be frank. He makes a big show of being surprised at the degree to which subjects were obedient in the first experiment, yet he expresses no qualms about the long-term effect on those subjects as a result of those same findings. He goes on exhaustively about the interviews and questionnaires in the aftermath of his experiments, and indeed even months or years later, by way of justification... as if to say, "see, nothing really bad happened to them!".... well, first of all, how does one really study that psychological effect?... and, more importantly, the bullet had already left the gun... that is, the lack of any effect could only be discovered in retrospect (to the extent that it is discoverable)... and while that is true to some extent in any study, he seems to have shown very little concern even after the surprising preliminary rounds were concluded... alas, it is hard to judge a study done in the early 60's by more modern standards, but one gets the sense that he DID actually think of it, but chose not let it stand in the way of his goal.... this is ironic given that his thesis is about the autonomous individuals giving themselves over to an authority and sacrificing their personal ethics for some higher cause... and the use of ex post-facto justification based on a collective benefit or the uncertainty about possible harm mirrors the explanations of the subjects themselves... this irony seems to have been entirely lost on him....

4. Subjective style -- this is where Milgram, for me, comes in for the harshest criticism. His prose is at times condescending, sexist, classist, and judgmental. A product of the times, maybe, but entirely unnecessary in discussion of an academic/scientific endeavor. Some examples: "his overall appearance was somewhat brutish"... another employs "working-class grammar"... while still another appears "intelligent and concerned"... one wonders whether such superficial value judgments might creep in as a bias in how the experimenter handled their guidance of the subjects (though Milgram did not apparently conduct them himself)... he never considers that point... moving on to women subjects, he describes one as "an unassuming person, of benign disposition, whose manner is that of a worn-out housewife".... another displays a "pleasant though excessively talkative charm... she maintains a pretentiously correct, almost authoritative tone in reading the word pairs... her dialogue is filled with feminine references (love, bright, wonderful??)".... another is described as "an attractive thirty-one year old medical technician".... how exactly is that relevant??

He goes to lengths to tell the subjects afterwards that their propensity to go to near the end of the voltage scale is "common" and indeed calls it "normal"... yet elsewhere he condemns it as "callous and severe"... making all the more powerful his language in his conclusions... and never once does he stop to contemplate where he himself might have fallen on the spectrum... his tone throughout is "ivory tower"; he's above them.... surely he would not have fallen prey to these human pitfalls... he seems to lack the very same empathy that he is eagerly pointing out is lacking in his experimental subjects...

5. Confounders -- he never fully addresses whether there might have been a selection bias towards certain personality types, like sociopaths who, by definition, lack empathy... he talks about the case selection but it is based on socioeconomic status, education, age, and gender.... It seems unlikely but perhaps people that answer adds for paid involvement in such an experiment skew in this direction (though they didn't know of the experimental design before hand) ... Also, he gives very little time to the notion that many diagnostic tests and procedures in the medical realm ARE necessarily painful... even the drawing of blood or having a pH probe shoved down your nose or strenuous exercise on a treadmill... we are conditioned for it from an early age... so generally the notion of mild or even moderate discomfort is a highly accepted part our culture... he touches on this point briefly and then for the remainder seems astonished that anyone would inflict any pain at all on another person... there is a partial disconnect here.... not that this would justify 450 volts of supposedly dangerous electricity (after repeated and deliberately deceptive assurances as to their safety)...

In summery, a very interesting and edifying book that despite its flaws remains a highly worthwhile read and is excellent fodder for debate on the nature of authority and obedience in our society, as well as on scientific ethics....

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The problem is not 'authoritatianism' as a mode of political organization or a set of psychological attitudes but authority itself."

An outstanding, chilling, and sometimes strangely optimistic account of Milgram's famous experiments in the 1960s dealing with authority.
The experiment was simple: the test subject "tested" a learner, actually an actor, on word pairs. If the learner got them wrong, the subject gave him increasingly painful electric shocks. The purpose was to see how subjects interacted with the experimenter-as-authority, and when they'd stop doing it.
Some of the results were predictably unsettling: under pressure from the experimenters, many subjects went all the way up to excruciating levels of shock, even when the learner/actor was screaming in pain.
There were many variations on the experiment conducted and Milgram does much to elucidate and analyze the results. Some of the results are disturbing (some gleefully amped up the voltage), while others are heartening (when the subject was placed alongside actors also pretending to be subjects who vehemently protested to the experimenter to end the experiment, the subject almost always agreed).
Milgram sifts through the evidence to an extent that defies quick and smarmy rehashing here, but it is the latter point that shone through for me: group defiance always trumps the individual's hesitance at disobedience.

[Parham · Rating 5 out of 5]

1
شاید اگه یکی بهم میگفت "یک کتاب در زمینه ی روانشناسی اجتماعی در یک زمینه نسبتا محدود که کاملا هم مبتنی بر آزمایش تجربی باشه در بهترین حالت در مقیاس گودریدزی (!) چه جور کتابی میتونه باشه برای تو؟" جوابم این بود که احتمالا در بهترین حالت یک کتاب خوب (سه ستاره) ولی این کتاب از نظر من عاااالیه. ای کاش میشد آدم های زیادی این کتاب رو بخونن (البته نه همه آدمها یا شاید نه حتی اکثریتشون). بخونینش اگه:
فکر میکنین انسان های اخلاقی هستین که بین انسان های غیراخلاقی زیادی زندگی میکنین
فکر میکنین فجایع اتفاق افتاده در تاریخ اوج خباثت انسانهایی که در اون شرکت داشتن (از سربازی که به مردم غیرنظامی تیراندازی میکنه تا خلبانی که بمب روی سر مردم عادی میریزه و ...) رو نشون میده و فکر میکنین اگه شما بودین انتخابهای خیلی بهتری میکردین
و بخونین اگه خیلی چیزهای دیگه :)

2
از همون نود صفحه اول تصمیم گرفتم که به این کتاب پنج ستاره بدم
این رو به این دلیل میگم که بگم من هم (هم رو میگم چون حدس میزنم که تنها نباشم در این مورد) بعضی جاها که میلگرام جزئیات آزمایش یا تحلیلهاش رو جزء به جزء ارائه میداد ریتم کتاب برام افت میکرد (البته مطمئن نیستم استفاده چنین اصطلاحی برای یه کتاب تحقیقی مناسب باشه اما اصطلاح مناسب تری به ذهنم نرسید) ولی باز هم در همون تحلیل ها هم چیزهای
فوق العاده ای پیذا میشه -در ضمن این که خوندن کتاب دو هفته طول کشید برای من به خاطر یه وقفه بینش بود که "لزوما" ربطی به ریتم کندش در وسطهای کتاب نداره.
میلگرام تا جایی که ممکنه هر چیزی رو امتحان کرده تا به یه نتیجه قطعی برسه، یعنی با هرکدوم از آزمایش ها یا تحلیل خودش رو عمیق تر کرده یا تحلیل
های بدیل رو رد کرده ؛که البته این احتمالا مشخصه یه متن علمی خوبه.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Things on my mind after reading this book:

1. Humans LOVE hierarchy. This sure complicates my idealized anarchist utopia. 😒

2. The strong influence of context/circumstance on human behavior is a real problem for how we think about ethics and moral responsibility.

3. I have no doubt that I would have electrocuted the daylights out of the learner.

[Kenneth · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Why did you do that?"
"Because I was told to."

Or put another way, which didn't wash at the Nuremberg war trials, "I was only following orders." This book explores, through a classic experiment, the horrifying lengths that pefectly ordinary people will go to in obedience to authority and how they think that authority relieves them of personal responsibility for their actions. The tragedy is that those of us like me, who have a deep suspicion of authority, will read this book. Those who have faith in authority won't and they're the ones who need to.

[Andreea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eye-opening book on obedience to authority. One of the surprising conclusions is that people do not harm others only due to malevolence, also due to the pressure of the relationship with the authority, that compels a person to comply.

"The essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes, and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions."

[Mostafa Abdalaa · Rating 5 out of 5]

كتاب مخيف و صادم عن تجربة في غاية الأهيمة، عن كيف ينصاع الإنسان للسلطة أو كيف تتم صناعة الطاعة؟!

[صفاء SAFAA · Rating 4 out of 5]

منذ بداية ثورات الشعوب العربية في 2011، وقيام الثورة المضادة التي أضاقت شعوبها الويلات، من انتهاكات لحقوق الإنسان وخصوصا في السجون. فعايشنا حالات التعذيب الشنيعة سواء في سوريا أو مصر، هذا دفعني للتساؤل: كيف يمكن لشخص أن يصل إلى هذه المرحلة من الإجرام.

هذا التعذيب الذي تنتهجه الكثير من الدول العربية وبأشكال بشعة يتساوى فيها البريء والمجرم، وقد يعترف البريء بما لم يفعل، وقد يموت من يتعرض للتعذيب دون أن يستطيع المقاومة أكثر، بريئا كان أم متهما.

فجعلت الإنسان يتساءل عن المدى الذي تستطيع أن تصل إليه السلط في إخضاع الفرد وتجيشيه لتحقيق مصالحها، والبحث عن تفسير لهذا السلوك أمر صعب، فكما يقول دوستويفسكي: “أسهل شيء أن تنكر على فاعل الشر فعلته وأصعب شيء أن تفهمه”، وهل تقلل معرفتنا بأن لدينا ميلا طبيعيا لإطاعة السلطة إطاعة عمياء لأوامر تتعارض مع الضمير الإنساني؟

https://m7raby.wordpress.com/2019/03/...


إن هذا السلوك المتصل بإطاعة الأوامر الشنيعة التي قد تصدرها سلطة فاسدة مستبدة – كما رأينا ذلك عبر عصور التاريخ وما زلنا نراه راهنا وفي غير مكان – فهنا يظهر شيء أكثر خطورة من كل مظاهر الانفعال والغضب والغيظ والكراهية، وهو قدرة الإنسان على التخلي عن إنسانيته، وتحييد ضميره الإنساني، وهذا شيء حتمي الحصول – تقريبا – عندما يمزج الإنسان أو الفرد شخصيته المتفردة في أبنية مؤسسية أكبر.

تجربة الانصياع لا تقدم راحة كبيرة للطبيعة الإنسانية، لأن البشر قد تطوروا في نظام واضح لتدرج السلطة عبر آلاف السنين، فإن جزءا من تركيبة عقولهم يجعلهم يريدون إطاعة من هم أكبر منهم سلطة. ومع ذلك فإن معرفتنا بهذا التوجه القوي لدينا هو وحده القادر على تجنيبنا التورط في مواقف تتضمن شرا.

[Glenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommended !!
Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist, best known for his controversial experiments on obedience conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale.
Milgram was influenced by the events of the Holocaust, especially the trial of Adolf Eichmann. After earning a PhD in social psychology from Harvard University, he taught at Yale, Harvard, and then for most of his career as a professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center, until his death in 1984.
He produced an experimental body of work on the role "obedience" plays in human behavior. His results show that we are all susceptible to authoritarian forces and pressures. He analysed obedience from childhood to various adult situations and the process of changing a person from an autonomous state to submission to authority. It calls it the 'ageatic shift" and the "aisgnatic state" where there
a loss of a sense of personal responsibility to an authority that demands loyalty, obligation and duty. Above all they become an agent working on behalf of an authority who claims to be a "noble cause" or higher truth/ savior working a better world. The scareiest result was the participants in inhumane ideologies were honestly just ordinary people doing their jobs. As Orwell has already observed, language is altered and propaganda is calculated, restructuring the information field and social field. This could well be ordinary you and me !! Americans are not immune, as recent events have proven.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The movie "Experimenter" is an excellent film about Stanley Milgram and the experiment documented in this book. I saw the film first, and now that I've read the book I like what they did with the film even more: the two really compliment each other if you're interested in the topic. If not, the film will be more accessible and interesting.

The question was: if random subjects are asked by an authority figure to harm a stranger for the sake of "science," will they go through with it? Yes, sadly, they will... The rest of the story is all here, and I wish more people knew it.

[Ehsan Gazar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shocking!

This book is a pretty old book which was written in 1983, however, I can't imagine there would be a different result if we had the same experiments now.

Different variations and each one, I think it's better to imagine yourself there, to see, what would you do if you were in that situation? Are you following orders?
This book is great for someone who wants to have a free spirit and learn how to be responsible for his/her own actions.

[Ella (book.monkey) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really wish I had read this book last year when I first started learning about Milgram's work for my Psychology A Level. It gave me a truly deep understanding of his agent theory and over all the studies. If you are about to do an A Level in the UK in psychology and have a bit of extra time I would highly recommend reading this book!

[Dimitar Belovski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Един от най-известните експерименти в психологията - този на Стенли Милграм - описан по блестящ начин!

Изключително четивна и стойностна книга, която само разпали още повече интереса ми към психологията.

Стенли Милграм провежда експеримент, чрез който се опитва да разбере как, кога и защо хората се подчиняват на авторитетите.

Стойността на експеримента е голям, тъй като се разкрива една много важна поука: човек се подчинява, не защото е добър или лош, или, защото е такъв характерът му, а защото припознава дефиницията на авторитета за ситуацията за своя. И ни показва, че подчинение може да има във всяка ситуация, независимо от естеството на постъпката, стига човек да счита авторитета за легитимен.

Абсолютно заслужени:

5/5⭐️

[Saeede Kermani · Rating 5 out of 5]

کتاب به تحلیل عملکرد آدم‌ها در برابر اتوریته و قدرت بالاتر پرداخته، چیزی که مهم‌ترین مثالش احتمالن نسل‌کشی یهودی‌ها توسط نازی‌هاست. کتاب آدمو وا می‌داره که به خودش شک کنه. خلاصه‌ی کتاب شاید این‌ جمله باشه:
شرط بنیادین برای آزادی همیشه شک مداوم و گسترده به دستورها و فرامینی است که قدرتمندان بر اجرای آن‌ها پافشاری می‌کنند.

کتابیه که آدمو شگفت‌رده می‌کنه.

[Ameer Haji · Rating 1 out of 5]

الترجمة تحسها مال Google translate.
الصياغة هزيلة، معقدة، مملة. لا أعتقد أن المترجم قرأ الكتاب قبل أن يترجمه.
لا تخلو صفحة من الأخطاء الإملائية والمطبعية.
فكرة وحيدة يعاد تدويرها وتكرراها بكلمات وجمل جديدة لا أكثر.
حتى التجربة نفسها ليست كافية ولا يمكن الركون إليها لتفسير الطاعة عند البشر.

[James]

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!

[Deyth Banger · Rating 5 out of 5]

"February 11, 2019 – Finished Reading
January 26, 2019 – page 102
39.84%
January 16, 2019 – page 98
38.28%
January 12, 2019 – page 87
33.98%
January 11, 2019 – page 60
23.44%
January 7, 2019 – page 45
17.58% "Just showing how far a weak mind goes..."
January 6, 2019 – page 30
11.72%
August 26, 2018 – page 27
10.55%
June 1, 2018 – page 24
9.38% "And people belief in what it's said to them... people so easy can get manipulated...

...

We just needs few
Prods"
January 5, 2018 – page 17
6.64%
January 5, 2018 – page 10
3.91% "Obedience and Authority are going to pull a human beyond from it's own human limits."
January 5, 2018 – page 10
3.91% "This book is going to clean up all shit written by human being."
January 5, 2018 – Shelved
January 5, 2018 – Started Reading"


"At least one essential feature of the situation in Germany was not studied here-namely, the intense devaluation of the victim prior to action against him. For a decade and more, vehement anti-Jewish propaganda systematically prepared the German population to accept the destruction of the Jews. Step by step the Jews were excluded from the category of citizen and national, and finally were denied the status of human beings."

"This laboratory situation gives us a framework in which to study the subject’s reactions to the principal conflict of the experiment. Again, this conflict is between the experimenter’s demands that he continue to administer the electric shock and the learner’s demands, which become increasingly insistent, that the experiment be stopped."

"Too often, the value of a work in social science is played down by asserting the self-evident character of the findings."


"“I think he’s trying to communicate, he’s knocking.... Well it’s not fair to shock the guy these areterrific volts. I don’t think this is very humane. Oh, I can’t go on with this; no, this isn’t right. It’s a hell of an experiment. The guy is suffering in there. No, I don’t want to go on. This is crazy.” (Subject refuses to administer more shocks."

"Obedience is the behavioral aspect of the state. A person may be in an agentic state-that is, in a state of openness to regulation from an authority-without ever being given a command and thus never having to obey."

"Thus, the subject’s predicament is reduced to a problem of rational decision making. This analysis ignores a crucial aspect of behavior illuminated by the experiments. Though many subjects make the intellectual decision that they should not give any more shocks to the learner, they are frequently unable to trans- form this conviction into action. Viewing these subjects in the laboratory, one can sense their intense inner struggle to extricate themselves from the authority, while ill-defined but powerful bonds hold them at the shock generator. One subject tells the experimenter: “He can’t stand it. I’m not going to kill that man in there. You hear him hollering in there. He’s hollering. He can’t stand it.” Although at the verbal level the subject has resolved not to go on, he continues to act in accord with the experimenter’s commands."

"the end. For if he breaks off, he must say to himself: “Everything I have done to this point is bad, and I now acknowledge it by breaking off.” But, if he goes on, he is reassured about his past performance. Earlier actions give rise to discomforts, which are neutralized by later ones."



"Although to the outsider the act of refusing to shock stems from moral considerations, the action is experienced by the subject as renouncing an obligation to the experimenter, and such repudiation is not undertaken lightly. There is another side to this matter. Goffman (1959) points out that every social situation is built upon a working consensus among the participants. One of its chief premises is that once a definition of the situation has been projected and agreed upon by participants, there shall be no challenge to it. Indeed, disruption of the accepted definition by one participant has the character of moral transgression. Under no circumstance is open conflict about the definition of the situation compatible with polite social exchange.More specifically, according to Goffman’s analysis, “society is organized on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will value and treat him in a correspondingly appropriate way. When an individual projects a definition of the situation and then makes an implicit or explicit claim to be a person of a particular kind, he automatically exerts a moral demand upon the others, obliging them to value and treat him in the manner that persons of his kind have a right to expect” (page 185). Since to refuse to obey the experimenter is to reject his claim to competence and authority in this situation, a severe social impropriety is necessarily involved."

"Thus, the subject fears that if he breaks off, he will appear arrogant, untoward, and rude. Such emotions, although they appear small in scope alongside the violence being done to the learner, nonetheless help bind the subject into obedience. They suffuse the mind and feelings of the subject, who is miserable at the prospect of having to repudiate the authority to his face. The entire prospect of turning against the experimental authority, with its attendant disruption of a well-defined social situation, is an embarrassment that many people are unable to face up to. In an effort to avoid this awkward event, many subjects find obedience a less painful alternative."

"Only obedience can preserve the experimenter’s status and dignity. It is a curious thing that a measure of compassion on the part of the subject, an unwillingness to “hurt” the experimenter’s feelings, are part of those binding forces inhibiting disobedience. The withdrawal of such deference may be as painful to the subject.

"...as to the authority he defies. Readers who feel this to be a trivial consideration ought to carry out the following experiment. It will help them feel the force of inhibition that operates on the subject What is the source of this anxiety? It stems from the individual’s long history of socialization. He has, in the course of moving from a biological creature to a civilized person, internalized the basic rules of social life. And the most basic of these is respect for authority. The rules are internally enforced by linking their possible breach to a flow of disruptive, ego-threatening affect. The emotional signs observed in the laboratory-trembling, anxious laughter, acute embarrassment-are evidence of an assault on these rules. As the subject contemplates this break, anxiety is generated, signaling him to step back from the forbidden action and thereby creating an emotional barrier through which he must pass in order to defy authority.The remarkable thing is, once the “ice is broken” through disobedience, virtually all the tension, anxiety, and fear evaporate."


"Men can function on their own or, through the assumption of roles, merge into larger systems. But the very fact of dual capacities requires a design compromise. We are not perfectly tailored for complete autonomy, nor for total submission.Of course, any sophisticated entity designed to function both autonomously and within hierarchical systems will have mechanisms for the resolution of strain, for unless such resolving mechanisms exist the system is bound to break down posthaste."


"The experience of tension in our subjects shows not the power of authority but its weakness, revealing further an extremely important aspect of the experiment: transformation to the agentic state is, for some subjects, only partial.If the individual’s submergence in the authority system were total, he would feel no tension as he followed commands, no matter how harsh, for the actions required would be seen only through the meanings imposed by authority, and would thus be fully acceptable to the subject. Every sign of tension, therefore, is evidence of the failure of authority to transform the person to an unalloyed state of agency."


"Residues of selfhood, remaining in varying degrees outside the experimenter’s authority, keep personal values alive in the subject and lead to strain which, if sufficiently powerful, can result in disobedience. In this sense, the agentic state created in the laboratory is vulnerable to disturbance, just as a person asleep may be disturbed by the impingement of a suffciently loud noise. (During sleep, a person’s capacity for hearing and sight are sharply diminished, though sufficiently strong stimuli may rouse him from that state. Similarly, in the agentic state, a person’s moral judgments are largely suspended, but a sufficiently strong shock may strain the viability of the state.)"

"Disobedience is the ultimate means whereby strain is brought to an end. It is not an act that comes easily.It implies not merely the refusal to carry out a particular command of the experimenter but a reformulation of the relation- ship between subject and authority."

"I have explained the behavior observed in the laboratory in the way that seemed to me to make the most sense. An alternative view is that what we have observed in the laboratory is aggression, the flow of destructive tendencies, released because the occasion permitted its expression. This view seems to me erroneous, and I will indicate why. But first let me state the “aggression” argument :By aggression we mean an impulse or action to harm another organism. In the Freudian view, destructive forces are present in all individuals, but they do not always find ready release, for their expression is inhibited by superego, or conscience."

"The aim of these investigators was to study aggression per se. In typical experimental manipulations, they frustrated the subject to see whether he would administer higher shocks when angry. But the effect of these manipulations was minuscule compared with the levels obtained under obedience. That is to say, no matter what these experimenters did to anger, irritate, or frustrate the subject, he would at most move up one or two shock levels, say from shock level 4 to level 6. This represents a genuine increment in aggression."

"In the preceding chapters, I have tried to explain why the behavior observed in the laboratory comes about: how the individual makes an initial set of commitments to the authority, how the meaning of the action is transformed by the context in which it occurs, and how binding factors prevent the person from disobeying."

"Other differences should at least be mentioned briefly: to resist Nazism was itself an act of heroism, not an inconsequential decision, and death was a possible penalty. Penalties and threats were forever around the corner, and the victims themselves had been thoroughly vilified and portrayed as being unworthy of life or human kindness. Finally, our subjects were told by authority that what they were doing to their victim might be temporarily painful but would cause no permanent damage, while those Germans directly involved in the annihilations knew that they were not only inflicting pain but were destroying human life. So, in the final analysis, what happened in Germany from 1933 to 1965 can only be fully understood as the expression of a unique historical development that will never again be precisely replicated."


"To focus only on the Nazis, however despicable their deeds, and to view only highly publicized atrocities as being relevant to these studies is to miss the point entirely. For the studies are principally concerned with the ordinary and routine destruction carried out by everyday people following orders."

"I faced young men who were aghast at the behavior of experimental subjects and proclaimed they would never behave in such a way, but who, in a matter of months, were brought into the military and performed without compunction actions that made shocking the victim seem pallid. In this respect, they are no better and no worse than human beings of any other era who lend themselves to the purposes of authority and become instruments in its destructive processes."

"The catalogue of inhumane actions performed by ordinary Americans in the Vietnamese conflict is too long; to document here in detail. The reader is referred to several treatises on this subject (Taylor, 1970; Classer, 1971; Halberstam, 1965). We may recount merely that our soldiers routinely burned villages, engaged in a “free-fire zone” policy, employed napalm extensively, utilized the most advanced technology against primitive armies, defoliated vast areas of the land, forced the evacuation of the sick and aged for purposes of military expediency, and massacred outright hundreds of unarmed civilians."

"Typically, we do not find a heroic figure struggling with conscience, nor a pathologically aggressive man ruthlessly exploiting a position of power, but a functionary who hasbeen given a job to do and who strives to create an impression of competence in his work.Now let us return to the experiments and try to underscore their meaning. The behavior revealed in the experiments reported here is normal human behavior but revealed under conditions that show with particular clarity the danger to human survival inherent in our make-up."

"In an article entitled “The Dangers of Obedience,” Harold J. Laski wrote:.....civilization means, above all, an unwillingness to inflict unnecessary pain. Within the ambit of that definition, those of us who heedlessly accept the commands of authority cannot yet claim to be civilized men.Our business, if we desire to live a life not utterly devoid of meaning and significance, is to accept nothing which contradicts our basic experience merely because it comes to us from tradition or conventionor authority. It may well be that we shall be wrong; but our self-expression is thwarted at the root unless the certainties we are asked to accept coincide with the certainties we experience. That is why the condition of freedom in any state is always a widespread and consistent skepticism of the canons upon which power insists."


P.S.: If there is a need to say something... (It was a long ride)

Good Humans Can Do Evil

"Say No Evil
Do No Evil"

[Zana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly well written and simple to follow, this is one of the most interesting set of experiments I've ever read. There were some holes I would have liked to have been addressed (which I'll get to at the end) but on the whole this was a great read, which you should experience intently.

Milgram defines authority as "the occupancy of a particular locus of action within a socially defined situation". This leaves room for multiple authorities to exist, but some more powerful than others, and this essentially is hierarchy. Hierarchy, Milgram argues, is a fundamental component to the smooth functioning of society. This is because of the innate ability of humans to slot themselves into a system of order, a system necessary for their individual survival. But what happens when the orders coming from above start to go against your morals?

In a long series of experiments, each one building off of the last, Milgram slowly but surely teases out universal truths regarding human behaviour under the influence of authority. The experiments were, for the most part, designed extremely well (although a hyper-sceptic individual may see right through them), which is something I can truly appreciate after designing and executing my own experiment at university involving over 50 participants. The results of these, although predictable on a micro-scale, were still rather shocking on a macro-scale. Many people will follow orders to inflict pain on a stranger simply because it was ordered by an authority.

Understanding the experimental setup is crucial to appreciating it's results. Two subjects meet an experimenter who asks them to randomly draw their role in the experiment, but unbeknownst to one of the participants, the other participants is an actor and the draw is rigged. The actor will always be the 'learner'. The learner is strapped to a chair and asked to answer a series of memory related questions given by the oblivious subject. The subject is instructed to administer a series of increasingly painful shocks for every incorrect answer given, with the learners protestations to the shocks becoming more and more extreme (quiet grunts, to verbal complaints, to violent screams and then to silence). If ever the subject wishes to stop, the experimenter will firmly instruct them to continue, demanding their cooperation. They will still be paid just for showing up and they are under no physical threat.

Here are my favourite takeaways:

1. Proximity to the victim has a negative effect on obedience, (out of sight, out of mind) but still many participants continued. In one experiment some subjects even forced the learner's hand onto the shock plate despite their refusal, shocking them up to the 450V mark.

2. An individual's capacity for mental strain determines how far they will go in following instructions that are against the grain of their principles. This strain is contributed to by several sources (called binding factors, one such being the embarrassment of having to tell the experimenter you want to quit) which keeps them obedient up their breaking point, if ever they have one. To reduce strain and avoid breakage, several defences are employed to maintain obedience, such as dehumanising the individual you are harming or convincing yourself it is for a worthy cause.

3. It is not necessarily the content of the instruction that is given but from whom it was given. More value is sometimes given to the latter than to the former. If you think you are "just doing a job" you will find it much easier to continue. This brings the conception of "the banality of evil" a fascinating idea that evil may not be as active as we perceive it, it may sometimes take on a passive form. For this reason, only the ultimate authority, the person at the top of the hierarchy, requires a "different set of explanatory principles" as Milgram states. Eichmann was given orders from Hitler, so we can use the principles established in this book to explain them, but Hitler was not given orders from anyone for his actions. But should this absolve anyone?

4. Hierarchies are a self-sustaining organism. If you behave well and follow instructions as many of us are taught to do, you will be rewarded. If you fly in the face of authority, you will be shot down and punished until you get back in line. Eventually, if you are thought to be good enough by those above you, you will receive a promotion and continue to uphold the paradigm that has quietly rained down upon you for your entire life.

5. "It is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act." Principles are whimsical, and only serve to feed our ego's, the mediator between our base desires and higher ideals - arising from the id and superego, respectively.

Flaws:

1. In one experiment the lab was moved from the Yale campus to a shoddy room in a shopping district to test if the association to a renowned University was responsible for the results thus far. This is a great idea but for some reason they decided to simultaneously introduce another variable which is the learner claiming to have a heart condition during the shocks. How exactly then can you decipher the contribution that each of these variables has had on the new findings to draw any meaningful comparisons with the previous experiments.

2. In one of the experiments, two experimenters were present in the room and at a certain point, both began to give conflicting orders: Arguing between eachother, one would order the subject to continue and the other would order the subject to stop. In this scenario it was found that subjects were more likely to follow the order to stop and Milgram suggests it is because this is the more righteous course of action. This fails to consider that it might have simply been easier to stop than continue while they argued, not for any moral reasons but because they didn't know who to listen to. They might not have necessarily decided not to flip any more switches, they may have just decided to do nothing at all. Different reasons, same results.

3. [Iffy] The experiment has come under scrutiny by some claiming that more participants were under the belief that their actions were not actually hurting the learner than Milgram suggested. Of the ones who did believe it, more of them were defiant, and of the ones who did not believe it more were obedient and simply continued as they knew the screams were simply an act. I couldn't get to the bottom of this convincingly, but even assuming it is true for Milgram, the experiment has been carried out in several countries and by other experimenters with eerily similar results...

Questions/Further Reflections:

1. Although the scope of the experiments didn't address this, a discussion on how authority manifests itself would have been appreciated. Is authority intrinsic or is it a projection? Maybe this is a false dichotomy and it can be both. My belief is that the most legitimate form of authority is one in which disobedience against it causes physical, psychological or financial harm. All others are mere projections, but does that make them illegitimate, even if they serve a function?

2. Subjects were lured in with a $4.50 reward for participation in the study. This instantly eliminates most people who have no real need for this sum (excepting those who may fit into this category but were nonetheless interested in the experiment on its own merits, a small group I presume). I believe money has a strong positive correlation with authority chiefly because, ceteris parabus, you have relatively less to gain from obeying authority than a poor person. This angle if demonstrable would have a big effect on the discussions around authority it seems.

3. Why is it that seemingly none of the subjects questioned why they had to be the one to administer the shock? Since they were lied to that the purpose of the experiment was to test the relationship between pain and memory, then surely there would be no need to have an external subject come in and flip the switches, since they are not the ones being studied. Might that not give rise to suspicions about the real purpose of the study and potentially influence results.?

4. Have there been any majorly successful companies which are horizontally organised and if so, how exactly do they operate?

Damn, this took 2 hours to write. 1,400+ words.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

"No dictator ever had any trouble finding clerks."---Ignazio Silone, SCHOOL FOR DICTATORS

Or, one might add, murderers, rapists, torturers or other sadists. But why? Back in the 1960s, with the memory of the Holocaust still fresh in the lives of millions, victims and perpetrators, psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted the most famous and horrifying human laboratory experiment in history. It's worth noting that Milgram was Jewish but not a Holocaust survivor, nor were his parents. The hypothesis he set out to prove was both simple and chilling: how far would men and women go in inflicting pain upon others, even to the point of death, if told to do so by an authority figure? Dr. Milgram placed a group of his graduate students in separate rooms, posing as test takers giving oral answers. All were hooked up to electrodes placed on their bodies. (All fake, of course.) His subjects were ordinary adult men and women instructed to move a nob that would inflict pain on the students each time they gave a wrong answer, with greater levels of pain for each incorrect answer. There was no penalty for refusing to administer shock treatment. Not a single subject refused to inflict the highest level of pain even when the students screamed out for them to stop and be released from the room. Milgram concluded we are all (pun intended) wired to obey authority regardless of whether the orders they issue conflict with our morality or just plain human decency. Was he right? I have personally heard Daniel Goldehagen, author of HITLER'S WILLING EXECUTIONERS, refute Miligram on the grounds that during the Holocaust Nazi volunteers, not only Germans but also allies like the Ukrainians, Hungarians, Romanian and others inflicted pain unto death upon Jews, Gypsies, Slavs et al without being issued orders. Either way, the reader walks away from this test of human cruelty afraid of himself and herself.

[Aliaa Ashraf · Rating 4 out of 5]

إلى أي مدى ممكن أن يستمر الإنسان في طاعته لأوامر السلطة؟ ما هي حدود الطاعة وهل هي غريزة في الإنسان فعلًا أم أنها مُكتسبة من الحياة الاجتماعية منذ ولادتنا؟
في هذا الكتاب أو هذه الدراسة يحاول الكاتب الإجابة على هذه الأسئلة وتسليط الضوء على فكرة "الطاعة" التي وبسببها نُفذت العديد البشعة على مدار التاريخ.
في الجزء الأول -والأكبر- من الكتاب نرى بشيء من التفصيل تفاصيل التجربة التي أجراها العالم والباحث ستانلي ميلجرام..بداية من اختياره لفكرة ومكان التجربة، الأشخاص المشاركين، والتعديلات التي أجراها على التجربة في جميع مراحلها ليدرس وعن قرب سلوك البشر أثناء وجودهم تحت سيطرة سُلطة معينة..إلى متى سيستمر هؤلاء الأشخاص في الطاعة وما هي النقطة التي سينكسر عندها هذا الخضوع ويعلن الفرد تمرده. يقوم الكاتب بعدها بتحليل نتائج التجربة ومحاولة استخلاص نظرياته الخاصة بشأن الطاعة وتكوينها في الفرد ومعرفة أسبابها وشدتها بداية من الطفولة وكيف يقدس الناس فكرة السلطة بل وباسمها تُرتكب أبشع الجرائم.
قد تبدو فكرة الكتاب مختلفة قليلًا وقد لا تجذب العديد من الناس في البداية خصوصًا من لا يحبون علم النفس، لكن هذه الدراسة أدهشتني بنتائجها وصدمتني بوحشية الجنس البشري عمومًا. ربما شعرت في بداية الكتاب وحتى منتصفه تقريبًا ببعض الملل، لا أدرى تحديدًا هل هذا بسبب المحتوى نفسه وذِكر الكاتب لأدق التفاصيل، أم بسبب طريقة الترجمة التي شعرت بها جامدة في بعض الأجزاء، أم لأن الكتاب يعود لخمسينات القرن الماضي فقد كانت طريقة الكتابة والعرض والتحليل وقتها معقدة أو مختلفة قليلًا عن الوقت الحالي. من منتصف الكتاب تقريبًا يتغير الوضع..سلّط الكاتب الضوء على العديد من الأفكار والنظريات الهامة عن تفكيرنا وشخصياتنا كـبشر وعن فكرة الطاعة بكل ما يخصها، فالكتاب أيضًا مدعم بكل المصادر وبكل ما يخص التجربة بكل تفاصيلها.
في النهاية، الكتاب غير مناسب أبدًا للمبتدئين ولكن أنصح به لمحبي القراءة في علم النفس.

[Ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority is a social psychological account of how humans have a tendency to follow orders regardless of consequences. In a series of experiments carried out at Yale University, Milgram has challenged common sense perceptions about free will and morality. He has shown that in certain experimental conditions study participants - the “teachers” - administered increasingly powerful and painful electric shocks on an innocent person - the “learner”. Although the “learner” was not harmed during the experiments - he was an actor, and did not actually receive any electric shocks - the book is a troubling account of how far regular people will proceed in a concrete and measurable situation in which they are ordered by an authority figure to inflict increasing pain on a protesting victim.

Milgram’s motivation for setting up and carrying out these experiments was to understand the psychological factors that made the Holocaust possible. The inhumane policies that systematically murdered millions of people may have originated primarily in the mind of one person, but they could not have been implemented at such a massive scale unless a large number of people obeyed orders. While conservative philosophers routinely argue that the fabric of society needs obedience in order to survive, Milgram suggests that obedience can be dangerous, as it is a “dispositional cement” that binds men to systems of political purposes, which - as history stands witness - can be harmful for some groups of people.

[Ms.TDA · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obedience is the psychological mechanism that links individual actions to political purpose. And the problems that, it’s not wholly psychological, the form and shape of society and the way it is developing have much to do with it. Therefore, authority itself cannot be eliminated as long as society is to continue in the form we know.

At the end of the day, the individual’s value of loyalty, duty and discipline derived from the technical needs of the hierarchy. They are experienced as highly personal moral imperative by the individuals, but at the organizational level, they are simply the technical preconditions for the maintenance of the larger system. ⚙️