>Who is Milgram? Can you explain further?
Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist at Yale, did a series of experiments during the period 1960-63 to test people's willingness to obey authority. It was accepted wisdom at the time that the Nazis could rise to power and commit so many atrocities because of fundamental flaws in German character and socialisation. Germans were considered to be 'predisposed to be monsters', as it were. Milgram considered that a too-facile explanation, and thought it would bear testing.
Milgram's experiment involved a learning situation in which 2 people would be paired, one as learner, the other as tester. The teacher was to give electric shocks of increasing severity for every wrong answer given by the learner. The possible shock levels, marked on the control panel, ranged from 'slight' (15V) through 'danger: severe shock' (350V) to a final, unlabeled 450V.
Of course, everyone involved except the 'teacher' were confederates of Milgram and there were no actual shocks ever given; the teacher was the only one whose behavior was to be observed. The experiment was scripted such that the 'learner' would give a grunt at 75V, complain verbally at 120, demand to be released at 150, at 285 give only an agonised scream, and after 330V remain silent and unresponsive.
Before conducting the first run, Milgram surveyed 110 people -- psychiatrists, uni students, and middle-class adults of varying occupations -- to get their prediction about where they personally would stop, if they were the teacher (he didn't tell them that the whole thing would be a fake), and where they thought that other people would stop. The predictions were consistent: everyone was sure that only the psychopathic 1 or 2% would go all the way to the end, that 'normal' people wouldn't continue past, perhaps 150V( marked 'strong').
To cut a long and scary story shorter than it deserves -- the majority of subjects were willing to shock the learner even when the man screamed in protest! Many went all the way to the end.
Milgram repeatedly fiddled with the experimental conditions, trying to water them down enough so that most people would quit right away. But even moving the site of the experiment away from Yale's prestige to a seedy storefront in Bridgeport with an anonymous, unaffiliated experimenter didn't reduce the effect much. Many other dilutions were tried, with various success. But even under the most favorable conditions, nearly half were ready to obey to the end.
Some of the clearest resistance came from 2 Europeans (but note that even they went further than predicted):
a 31-y.o. female medical tech, who had grown to adolescence in Nazi Germany and had only recently immigrated to the US. At 210V, she responds to the experimenter's 'you have no other choice [but to continue]' by saying 'I think we here are on our own free will.', and refusing to continue. When asked during debriefing about whether her background had anything to do with it, she said slowly 'perhaps we have seen too much pain.'
a 32-y.o. male industrial engineer who had emigrated from the Netherlands after WW2. At 255V, he responds to the 'you have no other choice' by saying, incredulously and indignantly, 'I *do* have a choice! Why don't I have a choice? ... I think I've gone too far already, probably!'
One of the clearest examples of obedient behavior came from a 43-y.o. first-gen Italian-American water inspector. He went all the way to the end. During debriefing, he said 'Well, I faithfully believed the man was dead til we opened the door. When I saw him, I said, "Great, this is great!" But it didn't bother me even to find that he was dead. I did a job.' He later related a conversation with his spouse: 'So I said to my wife, "Well, here we are. And I think I did a good job." She said, "Suppose the man was dead?" [So I said] "So he's dead. I did my job!" '
Milgram's experiments, which were widely replicated by others, around the world, caused such a political uproar that for years the US government refused to fund any experiment in which the subjects didn't know what was going on. Needless to say, that just about killed off experimental social psychology in the US.
Milgram closed his book (Obedience to Authority, as a classic still in print and imo worthwhile to own even for non-psychologists, especially leftists) by saying
'The results, as seen and felt in the laboratory, are to this author disturbing. They raise the possibility that human nature, or--more specifically--the kind of character produced in American democratic society, cannot be counted on to insulate its citizens from brutality and inhumane treatment at the direction of malevolent authority. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitmate authority.'
...and finally quoting Harold Laski from 'The Dangers of Obedience':
'...That is why the condition of freedom in any state is always a widespread and consistent skepticism of the canons upon which power insists.'