Human Nature Exam

What did Solomon Asch study in his social psychological experiment (Asch 1955), and how did
that research influence Stanley Milgram's work on obedience?

Solomon Asch in his famous social psychological experiment studied the effect of group
pressures on conformity. When answering a simple multiple choice line test, Asch found that
36% of subjects choose the obviously wrong answer when all other group members did so
before him. This experiment changed the paradigm of thinking at the time as it proved that
individuals can be very easily influenced by social forces. For Milgram however, Asch’s
experiment lacked in applicability – he wanted to design an experiment that was more
“humanly significant”. Milgram wondered if people could be influenced into doing more than
just lying about the length of lines and subsequently formulated the Milgram Obedience
Experiment testing how subjects could be influenced into delivering intense shocks to innocent
individuals.

How did Milgram test obedience to authority, and what were his main conclusions from his
research?

Milgram tested obedience to authority by having his subjects shock a confederate for what they
believed to be a punishment and learning experiment. According to the experimenter, the
subject must teach the confederate a list of words; if he forgets a word, a shock must be given,
increasing 15 volts for every mistake. Staring at a mere 15 volt shock, the subjects have the
potential to go up to 450 volts. Throughout the experiment, the confederate can be heard
screaming in agony and demanding to be let out, yet each time the subject disclosed his
discomfort in continuing with the experiment, the experimenter sternly told him to continue.
Due to the authority of the experimenter, 65% of the subjects delivered the fatal 450 volt
shock. This startling result confirmed Asch’s previous finding: that the situation is a powerful
influence of behavior and can easily overpower individual dispositions and personalities.

According to Milgram (1974), why is it wrong to believe that volunteer subjects administered
strong shocks because of their built up aggression?

Milgram believes that the results of his experiment are solely due to obedience and not to the
built up aggression within the subjects. He argues that it is the nature of obedience that the
subjects do not internally agree with the external commands, but carry them out nonetheless
only for the purpose of following an authority’s orders; he writes: “if the subject complied with
drinking water, does that mean he’s thirsty?” As well, the subjects show signs of extreme stress
and discomfort throughout the latter parts of the experiment, something that would not be
observed if they felt it was a socially acceptable situation to release their aggressions.
Moreover, in an alternate condition of the experiment, the subjects could decide themselves
what shock voltage to administer for the learner’s mistakes, in which most of the subjects only
used the lowest voltages to punish the confederate. If aggression were the primary motivator
of their actions, the subjects would have delivered much higher levels of shocks to the
confederate, but they did not, suggesting that it was the experimenter’s authority that had
forced them to continue.

In some variations of his study Milgram found that manipulating certain factors in the
experimental set up led to significantly lower levels of obedience. Which factors were these?

One of the most influential variables of the rate of obedience is distance: both of the authority
figure and victim in relation to the subject. When the victim was fairly distant from the subject
(could not be seen in another room), the obedience rate was 65%; however, that percentage
lessened when the victim was in the same room as the subject and decreased even more when
the subject had to physical force the victim’s hand onto a shock plate to incur the punishment.
For the authority figure, a closer distance had the opposite effect. When the experimenter was
in the same room as the subject, obedience occurred 65%, but when commands were made
over telephone, that number dramatically decreased. Other factors that led to lower levels of
obedience were if the subject participated in the shocking with two other confederates, both of
whom disobeyed and if the experiment was conducted at a private commercial facility (not
Yale).

How did Milgram connect his study of obedience to authority to the Holocaust and also to
Hannah Arendt’s notion of the banality of evil?

Milgram’s Obedience Experiment was actually inspired by the event of the Holocaust; with so
many Nazi officials defending themselves with “I was just following orders,” Milgram wanted to
know how authority figures can impact normal individuals. With the results of the experiment,
he posited that his theory of the power of the situation could offer an explanation into the
atrocities of the Holocaust. Milgram believed that many of the officials, supporters or even
bystanders of the Holocaust were caught up in the situation and the commands of authority
which overpowered their own values and beliefs, just as his normal American subjects had
done so in the experiment. He also posited that this authority figure had allowed them to
delegate their responsibility for the cruel actions to higher up in the hierarchy, allowing them to
commit such deeds. This interpretation is very similar to one offered by Hannah Arendt in her
book Eichmann in Jerusalem; she stated that normal people who are simply “doing their job”
can inadvertently cause severe suffering and cruelty onto other people, something she coined
the “banality of evil”. Milgram agreed with her, but added a psychological process to explain
why people follow orders so blindly: the power of the situation.

Some commentators found Milgram's study on obedience unethical. Why?

Milgram’s study is one of the most controversial studies in psychology due to debates on its
unethical nature. Many critics argue that Milgram unjustifiably subjected his subjects to
excessive levels of deception, put them into situations of extreme stress and may have
psychologically damaged them for an unknown period of time. In addition, Milgram himself did
not follow experimental procedures and failed to fully debrief many of his subjects, leaving to
believe that they had actually shocked or possibly killed an innocent man. However, Milgram’s
response to these ethical concerns is equally compelling. He did not know that so many people
would go so far into the experiment or the high levels they would incur; furthermore, in follow-
up studies, a majority of the subjects were glad that they participated in the experiment and
would participate again due to the lessons of blind obedience that they had learned. In a
historical context, Milgram’s experiment was not unusual in its unethicality – with a lack of
standards at the time, many experiments, like the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments, deliberately
risked human lives in pursuit of scientific progress.
What were Kenneth Clark and Mamie Clark (1947) studying, and what did their research
results show?

Kenneth and Mamie Clark during the 40s conducted the famous Dolls Test to investigate the
effects of segregation on young Black children. Asking to respond by choosing a White doll or a
Black doll, children were asked to make preferential, racial and self-identifications. Their results
showed that Black children even from the age of 3 clearly understand the concept of race as
most of them correctly identified the Black and White doll. However, self-identity is less
developed at this age and solidified as the children aged, as shown by the older children more
often choosing correctly when asked to pick the doll that looked like themselves. Most
importantly however, most children at all ages tend to reject the Black doll and prefer the
White doll; this can easily extend to affect their self-images, showing the extremely harmful
impacts of segregation.

How did the history of race relations in the United States influence the research of the Clarks
(1947)?

Around the time of the publication of the Clarks’ Dolls study, many historical events drew the
public’s attention to the issue of racial tension. Most significantly, in WWII, the blatant anti-
Semitism and genocide of the Jews made the harmful nature of racial discrimination that much
more real for Americans. Domestically, the civil rights movement, which grew significantly after
the war, continued to stress racial issues; their main focus at this time was to combat
segregation, which was still legal under the Separate but Equal principle established in Plessy v.
Ferguson. All of these events influenced the Clarks, both of whom had had contact with racial
organizations and movements and wanted to continue to contribute to the fight in a scientific
nature.

According to the 1952 Social Science Statement “The Effects of Segregation and the
Consequences of Desegregation,” how did racial segregation damage the personalities of
both Negro children and White children?

According to “The Effects of Segregation and the Consequences of Desegregation”, Clark

emphasized segregation’s harmful effects to both Black children and White children. For Black
children, segregation dramatically impacts their self-worth; seeing that they are kept separate
from those that are treated with respect, they become humiliated which can foster hatred for
themselves or their racial group. This can then lead to aggression, withdrawal or a complete
subscription to White middle-class values, all of which are coping mechanisms for the Black
children against the effects of segregation. For White children, segregation is harmful as well.
While they are socialized to be fair and just individuals, they are simultaneously exposed to the
gross injustices of racial segregation and discrimination; to cope, White children can develop
extreme guilt, confusion or a disrespect for authority.

How does the history of scientific studies on race and on race relations help to understand
the importance of the Clarks work on racial prejudice and segregation?

The Clarks’ research was shaped by many eras of racial history. Early research on the issue of
race established a racial hierarchy with Whites at the top; through studies of craniometry,
intelligence testing and other fields, Whites were shown to be more intelligent and upright
members of society. These studies supported the racism of the US, including segregation,
slavery and discrimination. However, this paradigm began to shift during the early 20 th century
– researchers began looking at race through a historical and cultural lens rather than a
biological one which supported the civil rights and abolitionist social movements at the time. It
was under this zeitgeist that the Clarks conducted their famous Dolls Test, further adding
validity to these movements.

What did the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision (in Brown v. Board of Education)
say about segregation, and how did that decision incorporate insights from scientific research
on the effects of segregation?

The Brown vs. Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court of the US was a landmark
decision in the history of American race relations. In the decision, the court struck down the
Plessy v. Ferguson decision which established the Separate but Equal doctrine, thereby
effectively ending segregationist policies. Social scientific research had a big role in this decision
– citing Kenneth Clark’s brief on the research done on the effects of segregation, the court
agreed that segregation has many harmful side effects and vouched for desegregation. In fact,
the Brown v. Board of Education decision was the first case to have cited social scientific
research as evidence due to its heavy influence during the trial.

What was the guiding goal of Mamie Clark’s work at Northside in Harlem? And what practices
did she promote at Northside in order to achieve that goal?

Mamie Clark’s Northside Centre for Child Development had its guiding goal in emphasizing the
strengths in every family. Instead of subscribing to cultural deprivation theory which posited
that racism had weakened the Black family structure and community, Northside took a holistic
point of view and found that many minority children had been misdiagnosed with learning
disabilities when in reality they had only received educational neglect. Moreover, the center
believed that all children should be served by a diverse group of staff and a pleasing physical
environment.
How did Kenneth Clark's views on race relations in the U.S. change from the 1950s to the
1970s?

Kenneth Clark’s views on race relations changed dramatically as the decades passed. In his first
book, Prejudice and your Child, he offers an optimistic explanation for American prejudices:
children learn prejudiced behaviours through observing and being influenced by their cultural
patterns. This in turn meant that prejudices could be combatted through educating the children
of their harmful effects and offering other ways of thinking. However, in his next book Dark
Ghetto, Clark became surprisingly pessimistic, attributing racial prejudice and discrimination to
deep systematic flaws in society due to the unwillingness to desegregate that he saw prevalent
in every part of the US. He further described ghettos as an institutionalized pathology, chronic,
persistent and is evidence of the imposition of power on African Americans by Whites. In his
last book, Pathos of Power, Clark remained negative, mainly focusing on the social powers that
thwarted change; he remarked that social scientists did at one time want to elicit change, but
now are one again “agents of those in power.”
Which scholarly studies influenced Zimbardo’s work on the Stanford Prison Experiment?

Zimbardo’s work was influenced by many famous scientific studies conducted before him.
Firstly, Asch and Milgram’s pioneering studies on social influences directly inspired Zimbardo’s
Prison Experiment; in fact, his research was actually meant to be a follow-up to Milgram’s
obedience study. In addition, Rosenthal’s study of the labels of mental illness draws similarities
to the role acceptance portion of the SPE – in Rosenthal’s experiment, normal people
committed to a mental health facility under false pretenses were treated like mental patients
even when they acted normally. Lastly, Milgram’s own research on deindividuation played a
part in his prison experiment; the SPE employed the same techniques to produce anonymity as
his previous experiment, using costumes, hoods and the removal of names.

In the decades leading up to the Stanford Prison Experiment, what events and concerns
focused scholarly and public attention on the problem of conformity?

The decades preceding the SPE focused a lot of the problem of conformity. During the 50s,
concerns for conformity were already brewing; with the expansion of the suburbs, media and
education system, society began critiquing these massive conformity pressures. But it was in
the 60s that vast anti-conformity movements took root. This was the decade of the hippies –
youth rebellions, anti-war protests, unconformist dress, music and hairstyles became the norm.
All of this was mainly due to the views of anti-establishment prevalent around this time; the
government, military, police and other institutions could not escape protests around the
country, especially around the subject of the Vietnam War. All of these events had brought the
idea of conformity to light, therefore directly influencing Zimbardo’s research.

What was the Stanford Prison Experiment, and what were the goals of this study?

The Stanford Prison Experiment was a study conducted by psychologist Philip Zimbardo for the
purposes of assessing the effects of imprisonment on normal citizens. Specifically, Zimbardo
wanted to investigate the processes by which the prisoners and guards lose and gain power
respectively. In the broader context, the experiment was constructed to be a follow-up to
Milgram’s famous obedience study – Zimbardo wanted to continue exploring the relationship
between situation, personal disposition and behavior.

What were the main results of the Stanford Prison Experiment?

During the first two days of the Stanford Prison Experiment, the subjects did not completely
embody their roles and were not taking the experiment too seriously, but as the experiment
went on, a distressing series of events took place. The guards became increasingly hostile and
aggressive, commanding the prisoners to do cruel things such as cleaning the toilets with their
bare hands, stimulating homosexual behavior and ridiculing and dehumanizing other prisoners.
Sometimes, the guards would not even allow the prisoners to use the toilet, leaving the cells
dirty and foul. What’s more, the prisoners themselves became increasingly passive; after a few
days, everyone (except the new prisoner) completely followed the guard’s every command,
becoming concerningly submissive. Other events, such as both the prisoners and guards
discussing only prison affairs in their private conversations, show that the subjects had
completely been overtaken by their roles and accepted the constructed reality in which they
were housed. Half the prisoners had to be released early due to mental breakdowns and the
experiment itself was prematurely terminated due to the excessive behaviors of the guards.

What does Zimbardo say about the relationship of systems to situations?

In Zimbardo’s model of conformity he emphasizes not only the importance of the situation in
creating behavior, but also the system in creating the situation. The system, according to
Zimbardo, provides support, authority and resources to the situation, allowing it to operate in
the way that it does. In the Prison Experiment, the situation may have been that the guards and
prisoner had a wide power differential, but it was the system of the prison – its setting, policies
and expectations – that made the situation ever so much more real. Zimbardo conjectures that
it was mainly due to the system’s support of the situation that the adoption of the roles and
rules occurred to quickly in the subjects; the situation alone could not have had such a dramatic
effect.

According to Zimbardo’s Model of Conformity presented in lecture, what best explains the
quick adoption of new rules and roles by the guards and prisoners?

In Zimbardo’s model of conformity, the prison situation was what best explains the behaviour
of the subjects. Due to the extremely well-constructed prison experience with actual arrests,
prison uniforms, roll calls and other prison nuances, the reality of the situation was
impenetrable - therefore, it facilitated many of the processes that led to the rapid adoption by
the subjects of their roles. IDK

Does Zimbardo think that the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment can be generalized to
explain conformity in other situations? If so, how?

Zimbardo strongly believes that the results of the SPE can be applied to other real life
situations. Like Milgram, he has emphasized that analyzing the system and situation in which
behaviours occur can explain many individual actions much better than looking into the
personal dispositions of the individual. Zimbardo applied this principle to many real world
situations; for example, he was an avid commenter on the Abu Ghraib scandal, believing that it
was not just a “few bad apples” who caused the abuses, but rather the whole government
hierarchy and other situational forces. Moreover, he has become a prison reform advocate,
asserting that the prison system engenders abusive behaviours by the guards, not the
personalities of the guards themselves. As well, he applies his prison model to other
metaphorical prisons; racism, sexism, domestic abuse and even shyness, he posits, are all
prisons in which a guard enacts complete control over a prisoner.
How did Freud explain aggression?

Freud’s theory of aggression went through several changes in his lifetime, but one thing stayed
certain: he believed that aggression is an innate behaviour, and not a learned one. Firstly, he
conjectured that aggression only occurred in relation to a psychosexual stage; for example,
biting was a manifestation of aggression in the oral stage and death wishes against the same-
sex parent were those of the phallic stage. However, he changed his theory as he aged, this
time emphasizing the role of the ego-instinct. Freud posited that the main aim of the ego-
instinct is self-preservation, meaning that anything that threatens an individual’s pleasure and
satisfaction will release aggression in hopes of destroying the source of the threat. Lastly, Freud
became even more abstract with the ideas of the life-instinct, which contains an individual’s
sexual urges and self-preservation, and the death-instinct, which is the urge to “return to a
state of nothingness”. These two are in constant conflict with the life-instinct gaining the upper
hand (which is why we’re not all dead); by redirecting the death-instinct’s urges outward, the
life-instinct effectively prolongs our life and consequently creates aggression. Id??

How did behaviorists such as B.F. Skinner explain aggressive behavior?

Behaviourists took an opposite stance of Freud on the issue of aggression. They believed that
all behaviours are solely due to classical and operant conditioning and that very few things are
innately given to humans. In terms of aggression, this philosophy applies well – aggressive
behaviours are not innate or instinctual, but are actually learned through the reception of
rewards and punishments and can be finely controlled in the same way. This may seem
outlandish, but Skinner did complete this process with pigeons; by rewarding them with food
for attacking a fellow pigeon every time a blue light is on, he could control when the pigeons
acted aggressively simple with the flip of a light switch. Skinner then generalized his results to
humanity as well.

What developments in the wider society drew public and scholarly attention to the problem
of aggression, including how children learn new aggressive behaviors?

During the 20th century, many socio-historical developments had occurred that drew public and
scholarly attention to the issue of aggression. One of the most obvious ones is the warfare –
with two world wars and many proxy wars within a bigger Cold war, humanity’s aggressions
seemed to be insatiable. Within the US, the problems were not more subdued. During the 50s
and 60s, racial tensions grew to a boil as the civil rights movement reached its zenith; juvenile
delinquency was so prevalent that there were Congressional hearings on the issue; and with the
introduction of the television into the home, people wondered whether aggression could be
transferred from the screen to the mind. With all these issues in play, many scholars wanted to
explore the idea of aggression scientifically, thereby stimulating many experiments including
the Bobo Doll experiment by Bandura.

What research did A. Bandura, D. Ross, and S.A. Ross report in their 1961 paper on the
transmission of aggression?

Albert Bandura’s Bobo Doll experiment produced interesting results. By having young children
watch an adult model act aggressively towards a Bobo doll, he found that this simple
observation increased their aggressive behaviours dramatically when presented with the same
doll. In fact, the children actually imitated the specific actions of the adults, including kicking,
using a mallet, and saying certain phrases. Non-imitative aggression was also common when
the children were exposed to aggressive adults, but none of these patterns were seen in
children who had witnessed a calm adult. Bandura also reported gender differences in
behaviour, with boys acting more physically aggressive to male models and girls more verbally
aggressive to female models; this was explained by sex-appropriate behaviours being imitated
more readily than sex-inappropriate behaviours.

How did A. Bandura, D. Ross, and S.A. Ross explain their experimental results?

Bandura and his colleagues developed a new theory to explain the results of their Bobo Doll
experiment named Social Learning Theory. The theory goes against the behaviourist paradigm
of attributing behaviours solely to reinforcements and punishments, but posits that mere
observation is enough to elicit behaviours. This process occurred in the experiment when the
subjects imitated many of the adult model’s behaviours simply having observed them without
receiving rewards or punishments of any kind. Specifically on the topic of aggressive behaviour,
social learning theory equally applies – it explains aggression as a behaviour that is not innate
or learned through operant condition, but rather learned through observation and replicated
through imitation.

Did A. Bandura, D. Ross, and S.A. Ross find gender differences in their studies of aggression?

Bandura and his colleagues did find gender differences in the imitation of aggressive
behaviours. Boys, they found, more readily imitated physical aggression when exposed to the
male model versus the female model, but surprisingly, so did the girls. In terms of verbal
aggression the imitation occurred most often when the subjects were exposed to the same-sex
model. Bandura attributed these peculiar results to the appropriateness of these behaviours in
relation to the model’s gender – subjects are more likely to imitate behaviours that are sex-
appropriate for the model. Physical aggression is a male trait, hence why both boys and girls
imitated the behaviour more when exposed to a male model; verbal aggression is more sexually
ambiguous, hence why the subjects imitated the behaviour more if the model was of the same
gender. This explanation is backed-up by the unsolicited gender comments the subjects made
during the experiment such as “that's not the way for a lady to behave,” and “that man is a
strong fighter.”

Do you agree with Milgram’s interpretation of the results he obtained?

During the Nuremburg and Eichmann trials prosecuting the officials and orchestrators of
the Holocaust, one of the most common defences was “I was just following orders”. This was a
novel event in the legal realm – lawyers and laymen alike were grappling with whether or not
simply doing as your told could excuse any behaviour at all, let alone the atrocities of mass
genocide. But taking a step back, can people even be so obedient as to follow murderous
commands? These events and the questions they elicited turned many around the world onto
the issue of obedience, one of which was Jewish Stanley Milgram. A psychology professor at
Yale University at the time, they inspired him to scientifically evaluate the effects of obedience.
In 1965, Milgram set up his famous experiment in which subjects were told to continually shock
a confederate, eventually reaching dangerous voltages; the results of the experiment, Milgram
posited, explained many aspects of real world obedience situations and could be applied to the
Holocaust. However, I cannot fully agree with Milgram’s interpretation; although many of his
broader points are valid, he often fails to appreciate the limitations of a laboratory setting
which can be quite different from reality, therefore producing results that cannot be fully
generalizable to all situations.

The results of the Milgram experiment were truly astounding; it showed a side of
humanity that had never been scientifically evaluated before. Out of 40 men who participated
in the experiment, 65% of them continued shocking who they thought was an innocent man
only at the behest of an experiment who urged them to go on whenever a subject expressed his
doubts. This result was even more surprising when viewed in conjunction with the aspects of
the experiment that were clearly designed to alert the subject to the cruelty of their actions –
the electric shock generator was marked with Intense Shock, Danger: Sever Shock and XXX on
the later voltages, and the confederate victim’s pre-recorded screams of agony and demands to
be released from his straps. Even though every subject showed clear signs of severe stress due
these aspects of the experiment, still 65% of them followed the experimenter’s instructions
rather than their own internal values. Due to these surprising results, Milgram posited that the
power of the situation is more effective at determining behaviour than personal dispositions.
Through other studies, this theory has been proven to be true, but Milgram’s belief that his
experiment explains other real life obedience situation is less than accurate.

One of the most compelling reasons to be skeptical of the generalizability of Milgram’s

experiment is the lack of external validity; his research design scrutinized every detail of the
experimental situation, something that is impossible out in the real world. For example, the
standardization of the experimenter’s prods was extremely unrealistic. In the lab, the authority
figure could only reply with four statements if the subjects were to express their doubts about
continuing, which included “the experiment requires that you go on” and “it is essential that
you continue”; in real life situations, authority figures could offer up millions of more effective
or coercive rationalizations in an attempt to arouse an individual’s obedience. Moreover, the
subjects had no time to think and no one to confide in to make a proper decision. In the real
world, there are rarely any situations in which an individual must make an immediate decision
with no one to confide in; many of the gruesome events Milgram applied his experiment to
occurred over years, which was certainly enough time for the individuals who participated to
think about the cruelty of their actions and be influence by the opinions family and friends.
Milgram’s specifically constructed world also neglected to include some aspects of real life
situations, one of which being the prejudices of the individuals. With no cultural or historical
animosity between the subject and the victim, how can Milgram contend that his obedience
study accurate explains cultural genocides and political warfares? With all these factors in play,
Milgram’s laboratory experiment quickly dissolves to be a closed system of scientific
manipulations rather than an open system which accurate represents reality.

Another aspect of the experiment that undermines its applicability to real life situations
is the nature of its authority figure. In Blass 1998, the author uncovered that many people
believed that the experimenter in the obedience study had represented an expert authority,
one who has special knowledge or expertise, rather than a legitimate authority, one who is
believed to have a right in issuing commands that individuals have an obligation to follow. This
distinction is one that is very important: an expert authority has a new layer of authority than
legitimate authorities. This is due to the fact that many laymen lack enough knowledge to
effectively protest against expert authorities – many individuals follow their command as they
do not fully understand the importance what they’re being asked to do and simply assumes it is
quite relevant under the guise of science. Legitimate authorities, however, can cause various
reactions. Many individuals who have authoritarian personalities are purposely recruited into
military or bureaucratic positions due to their innate and unquestioning respect for authority,
while on the other hand, there are many anti-establishment individuals who need more
legitimate reasons to accept legitimate authorities than simply because they are in a position to
issue commands. In many real world situations, legitimate authorities are those in power, not
expert authorities; Milgram’s experiment does not relevantly explain these situations, applying
better to society’s unquestioning belief in publicized scientific articles than the atrocities of war.

One of the biggest impacts of the obedience experiment, according to Milgram, was its
application to the brutalities of the Holocaust and how so many seemingly normal individuals
committed such heinous acts; but comparing these two events in detail, Milgram’s experiment
does not even come close to explaining a multifaceted, historically-laced genocide. Firstly, the
Milgram experiment lacks a huge aspect of the Holocaust – hate; the subject did not have
hugely fervent prejudices against the confederate whereas many German who joined the SS
were extremely anti-Semitic. In addition, the Milgram subjects had actually seen the
confederate consent to being shocked, something that cannot even be fathomed in the case of
the Holocaust. Moreover, the subjects in the obedience study were explicitly told that their
actions would not result in permanent tissue damage; the SS officers and officials who
orchestrated the Holocaust knew exactly that the Jews were being sent off the concentration
camps to be systematically killed. Another detail to consider is the timespan in which the
Holocaust occurred, leaving its participants plenty of room to contemplate their actions, a
luxury the subjects of Milgram’s study did not receive. With all of these facets in play, Milgram’s
Obedience Experiment seems more disparate from the Holocaust than similar – his contention
that a tightly controlled study can be applied to a massive genocide suddenly lacks validity.

Stanley Milgram’s career is filled with achievements, the biggest of which is designing
and executing the profound Obedience Experiment which changed the way we think about evil
forever. Yet is it not without mistakes; specifically, due to its lack of external validity and
ambiguous concept of authority, Milgram’s experiment is not as applicable to real life events
like the Holocaust as he wrote it to be. But that does not mean that the experiment was a
waste. Because of the obedience study, Milgram could posit the situational approach to looking
at behaviour, which birthed a paradigm shift in the field of psychology; it would go on to inspire
another famous psychological study, Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment. Though it may not
explain complex socio-historical phenomena, Milgram did shed light on smaller, individual
behaviours well – he had actually hoped that his experiment would have an enlightenment
effect on those who read it. Historically speaking, the Milgram experiment had one of the
biggest impacts on the scholarly world; it may not have been able to explain what it set out to
investigate, but it nonetheless asdlcaln