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

DanArmak

There's a book called Behind the Shock Machine by psychologist Gina Perry, published just a week ago, which investigates the original Milgram obedience experiments. I haven't read it, but I've read a summary / editorial published in the Pacific Standard.

Of course, the editorial is in some measure designed to provoke outrage, generate click-throughs, and leave readers biased against Milgram. I don't trust the editorial to report unbiased truth. If anyone has read the book, what do you think about it?

Key quote from the editorial:

Perry also caught Milgram cooking his data. In his articles, Milgram stressed the uniformity of his procedures, hoping to appear as scientific as possible. By his account, each time a subject protested or expressed doubt about continuing, the experimenter would employ a set series of four counter-prompts. If, after the fourth prompt (“You have no other choice, teacher; you must go on”), the subject still refused to continue, the experiment would be called to a halt, and the subject counted as “disobedient.” But on the audiotapes in the Yale archives, Perry heard Milgram’s experimenter improvising, roaming further and further off script, coaxing or, depending on your point of view, coercing participants into continuing. Inconsistency in the standards meant that the line between obedience and disobedience was shifting from subject to subject, and from variation to variation—and that the famous 65 percent compliance rate had less to do with human nature than with arbitrary semantic distinctions.

The wrinkles in Milgram’s research kept revealing themselves. Perhaps most damningly, after Perry tracked down one of Milgram’s research analysts, she found reason to believe that most of his subjects had actually seen through the deception. They knew, in other words, that they were taking part in a low-stakes charade.

Key quote from the editorial:

Perry also caught Milgram cooking his data. In his articles, Milgram stressed the uniformity of his procedures, hoping to appear as scientific as possible. By his account, each time a subject protested or expressed doubt about continuing, the experimenter would employ a set series of four counter-prompts. If, after the fourth prompt (“You have no other choice, teacher; you must go on”), the subject still refused to continue, the experiment would be called to a halt, and the subject counted as “disobedient.” But on the audiotapes in the Yale archives, Perry heard Milgram’s experimenter improvising, roaming further and further off script, coaxing or, depending on your point of view, coercing participants into continuing. Inconsistency in the standards meant that the line between obedience and disobedience was shifting from subject to subject, and from variation to variation—and that the famous 65 percent compliance rate had less to do with human nature than with arbitrary semantic distinctions.

The wrinkles in Milgram’s research kept revealing themselves. Perhaps most damningly, after Perry tracked down one of Milgram’s research analysts, she found reason to believe that most of his subjects had actually seen through the deception. They knew, in other words, that they were taking part in a low-stakes charade.

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.

Indeed. IIRC, some of the follow-up experiments found that when there are multiple people involved, once one of them defies the authority it becomes much more likely that others will fail to comply as well (an effect not seen in the original study since the original study only applied authority to one subject at a time, of course). On the surface, this seems to suggest that authoritarian regimes should have a problem; the existence of any opposition should substantially undermine their authority. I can speculate about why they are sometimes able to succ... (read more)

5DanArmak13y

It jumped out at me too. To me it reads like drivel added by the article to finish on a meaningless note of deep wisdom. That the article said this doesn't provide much evidence one way or the other about the book and the book's author.

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

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

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