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Perspectives on Obedience to Authority: The Legacy of the Milgram

Experiments

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DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-4560.1995.tb01331.x

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Journal of Social Issues. Vol. 51. No. 3 . 1995. pp. 1-19

Perspectives on Obedience to Authority:

The Legacy of the Milgram Experiments
Arthur G. Miller
Miami UniversiQ

Barry E. Collins and Diana E. Brief

University of California at Los Angeles

The experiments of Stanley Milgram on obedience to authority have achieved a

truly remarkable visibility. one that is rare in the social sciences. Although
conducted over 30 years ago, Milgram’s research is currently one of the most
widely cited programs of studies in psychology. From their inception, the obe-
dience studies have also been controversial. For many, they reveal something
very illuminating about human nature. They have also been, however, the recip-
ient of scathing ethical and methodological criticism. While the controversial
features of Milgram’s research have been well documented, the substantive core
of Milgram’s concern, namely obedience to malevolent authority, has not re-
ceived correspondingly careful attention. The main objectives of the articles in
this issue are to track the progress of the impact of the obedience research in
contemporary research and thought, and to suggest directionsfor the future. This
introduction to the present issue provides an empirical and conceptual overview
of Milgram’s research and concludes by highlighting some major themes in the
papers to follow.

I just said to myself, my God, what is this? What’s happening here? How could people do
this to other people? (Dr. Leon Bass, an American soldier upon arriving at the Buchen-
wald concentration camp in 1945)
This article describes a procedure for the study of destructive obedience in the laboratory.
It consists of ordering a naive S to administer increasingly more severe punishment to a
victim in the context of a learning experiment. (Stanley Milgram, 1963, p. 371)

Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Arthur G. Miller. Department of

Psychology, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056, or to Barry E. Collins. Department of Rychoio-
gy, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024.

1
W22-4537/95/woO-ooO1$03.00/1 0 1Y95 The Sociely fur the Psychological Study of Social Ir~ues
2 Miller et al.

Introduction

In terms of a criterion that many in academia would value above all others,
namely to have one's work and ideas make an impact-upon students, scholars
from a host of academic disciplines, authors, researchers, critics (both friend and
foe), and the lay reader-Stanley Milgram's' experiments on obedience to au-
thority are surely among the most celebrated in the history of psychology (Mil-
gram, 1963, 1965, 1974). In a virtually seamless flow of academic debate and
published commentary, the Milgram experiments, from their first appearance
over 30 years ago, have stimulated thought as has perhaps no other single
research program. The main objectives of the articles in this issue are to track the
progress of that impact in contemporary research and to suggest directions for the
future.
As Elms (this issue) suggests, the towering impact of the Milgram obe-
dience experiments clearly rests upon the very sobering social issues raised by
the research itself. It is the phenomenon of destructive obedience-more specifi-
cally, the prospect, raised by Milgram's extensive research program, that such
behavior could be elicited from very large numbers of seemingly normal, aver-
age persons-that was, and remains, the core issue. Milgram, and a generation
of subsequent commentators, have drawn parallels not only to Nazi Germany, but
also to an array of scenarios involving destructive obedience, such as the My Lai
Massacre in Vietnam, the mass suicide, under the directive of Jim Jones, at
Jonestown, and to crimes of obedience more generally (e.g., Darley, 1992;
Kelman & Hamilton, 1989).
Before previewing the content of this issue in more detail, let us step back,
for a moment, to examine the foundation upon which this issue is built: Mil-
gram's paradigm, his observations, and his conceptual analyses.

The Beginning

A short article with an innocuous title-"Behavioral Study of Obe-

dience"-appeared in a 1963 issue of the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psy-
chology that was destined to change the landscape of modem social science. For
many, these are among the most significant studies on human behavior ever
performed (e.g., Brown, 1985)-but for others, these are experiments that
should not have even been performed (e.g., Baumrind, 1985).
Contributing to the extraordinarily rapid visibility and controversial status
of this research were its association with the Nazi Holocaust and the intense
conflict experienced by many of the research participants. In this first publication
(of a three-year programmatic series of experiments), Milgram framed the obe-
dience project in the context of the Nazi extermination policy:

'Stanley Milgram was born in 1933 in New York City and died in December 1984
Perspectives on Obedience: Introduction 3

Obedience, as a determinant of behavior, is of particular relevance to our time. It has been

reliably established that from 1933-45, millions of innocent persons were systematically
slaughtered on command. Gas chambers were built, death camps were guarded, daily
quotas of corpses were produced with the same efficiency as the manufacture of ap-
pliances. These inhumane policies may have originated in the mind of a single person, but
they could only be carried out on a massive scale if a very large number of people obeyed
orders. (1963, p. 371)

Milgram’s decision to frame the obedience project in the shadow of the Holo-
caust was of paramount significance because of the powerful emotions and
intellectual controversies associated with efforts to understand the Holocaust
itself. From their inception, the obedience experiments were seemingly endowed
with an undeniably inflammatory, provocative essence, qualities that were, in an
important sense, distracting in terms of Milgram’s primary objectives.
Milgram described an experimental paradigm for studying obedience to
malevolent authority (see Elms, this issue). Following in the tradition of the
famous conformity studies of his mentor, Solomon Asch, Milgram exposed
participants to a simple, but intense decisional conflict: To either remain defiant
or to yield to an experimenter’s demands at the expense of violating one’s
personal values.

The Experimental Analysis of Authority

Milgram took advantage of the context of a psychological experiment with

its “built-in” hierarchical role structure. The role of “Authority” was played by
an experimenter, highly formal in appearance and manner. Subjects were in-
structed to start at the first shock lever (15 volts) and increase the punishment by
one shock level for each of the learner’s (confederate’s) mistakes. In response to
hesitation on the part of the subject, the experimenter responded, if necessary,
with one of four increasingly strident prods:
Prod I-Please continue, or please go on.
Prod 2-The experiment requires that you go on.
Prod 3-It is absolutely essential that you continue.
Prod 4-You have no other choice, you must go on
These prods are, in an important sense, the most important methodological
feature in Milgram’s paradigm. Prods 3 and 4, in particular, distinguish this type
of experiment from all other studies of social influence, for these are literally
commands or orders that, if obeyed, ultimately resulted in the learner appearing
to receive intolerable pain. Examined out of context, of course, these prods are
falsehoods and manifestly unenforceable. However, in the context of the obe-
dience paradigm as construed by the participants themselves, they influenced
large numbers of participants to shock a protesting individual-protests that
escalated, in some instances, to the (apparent) point of no longer responding to
the task. The traditional analyses of the Milgram experiments, including Mil-
4 Miller et al.

gram’s own observations, have focused upon social influence that has its origin
in the authority/subordinate relationship between the experimenter and the teach-
er-subject. However, as we indicate below (see The Advantages and Disadvan-
tages of the “Obedience” Metaphor), several papers in this volume emphasize
other forms of social influence, including expert power and the norms of socially
appropriate social interactions.

The Initial Findings: Behavior und Emotion

In his first publication, Milgram reported what for many will always consti-
tute the key “Milgram finding:” 65% of the participants obeyed the experimen-
ter’s orders that they shock, in steadily increasing magnitude, a protesting victim
to the point of maximum punishment. It was not that Milgram had actually
solved a problem or confirmed a theory that made this research so provocative.
Rather, his experiments raised extraordinarily vital and sobering questions. Why
were subjects so obedient under circumstances that, on the surface, would not
seem to warrant such influence? Why were the findings so unexpected? What did
the surprisingly high rate of obedience in others tell us about ourselves, about our
naive assumptions regarding human nature? Did Milgram actually isolate one of
the crucial processes that, in a vastly larger and historically complex context, had
made the genocide of the Holocaust possible? These are questions that were on
everyone’s minds. Until Milgram, however, no one had had the required combi-
nation of personal motivation, intellectual discipline, technical ingenuity, and
some would say, courage, to mount a major research effort to address them.
Regardless of the actual findings, Milgram’s unprecedented contribution was in
extending the analysis of obedience from that of speculation and philosophical
analysis, i.e., talking or thinking about the issue, to that of controlled behavioral
observations under systematically varied contexts. The importance of this simple
fact, in terms of the sheer impact of these experiments upon generations of
students, in our estimation cannot be overemphasized (see Miller, this issue).
In addition to the unexpectedly high proportion of obedient subjects, anoth-
er major finding was the intense stress experienced by many participants, graph-
ically reported by Milgram:
I observed a mature and initially poised businessman enter the laboratory smiling and
confident. Within 20 minutes he was reduced to a twitching, stuttering wreck, who was
rapidly approaching a point of nervous collapse. He constantly pulled on his earlobe, and
twisted his hands. At one point he pushed his fist into his forehead and muttered: ‘Oh
God, let’s stop it.’ And yet he continued to respond to every word of the experimenter, and
obeyed to the end. (1963, p. 377)

This incongruence between emotion and behavior suggested that under social
pressure, many individuals will engage in behaviors that produce considerable
distress in others and in themselves; these are behaviors that they, in principle,
Perspectives on Obedience: Introduction 5

would consider themselves incapable of performing, and that, in fact, they would
not perform without such influence. Milgram noted that “one might suppose that
a subject would simply break off or continue as his conscience dictated. Yet, this
is very far from what happened” (1963, p. 377).

Situational Influences on Obedience to Authority: The Power

of the Situation

In a widely circulated film produced by Mitgram in 1965, a major segment

is devoted to one participant who obeys all instructions to the 450 volt level.
Although this individual hardly appears sadistic or hostile (he makes repeated
efforts to disengage himself, only to return to the shock generator upon the
experimenter’s prodding), it is virtually impossible not to think of this person’s
actions as reflecting his character-his lack of resolve, his weakness. Why then
do social psychologists assert that it is not the person but rather the “power ofthe
situation” that is the major lesson of these experiments?
The power of the situation is demonstrated in an extensive research program
consisting of approximately 20 situational variations on the basic paradigm, with
20-40 participants in each. These are described in detail in Milgram’s text
(1974), and some of them are reviewed below.

Proximity and Orders to Stop Delivering Shocks

Experiments 1-4 varied the proximity of the subject ( i . e . , teacher) and

learner. In Experiment 1, the learner was in an adjoining room. Vocal protests
were introduced in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 placed the learner in the same
room with the teacher. Experiment 4 involved the subject placing the learner’s
hand on a shock plate to receive the punishment. Obedience decreased as the
physical closeness of the teacher and learner increased, suggesting the crucial
importance of empathic identification with the victim. The physical distance
between the participant and experimenter was examined in Variation 7. The
experimenter was not physically present in the laboratory but gave instructions
by phone. Obedience was sharply reduced, to approximately one-third of the
baseline level. The physical presence and surveillance of the authority were thus
of vital significance in the observed obedience.
Would subjects obey orders to stop shocking the learner‘? In Variation 12,
Milgram devised a script in which the experimenter (at the 150 volt level)
instructed subjects to discontinue shocking the learner. However, the learner
insisted that he was strong enough to continue. Obedience, in this instance,
consisted of “not shocking the learner,” and thus the findings clearly indicated
that it was the authority who was obeyed, not the learner. Variation 14 required
the experimenter to play the role of learner (the confederate assigned to the
6 Miller et al.

learner role expressed anxiety that the experimenter “relieved” by saying that he
would assume the learner role initially himself). The subject was then ordered by
the peer (confederate) to continue shocking the experimenter, but at the 150 volt
level, the experimenter instructed the shocks to cease. All subjects immediately
obeyed these instructions. Thus, the key issue being examined in this research is
obedience to authority, not aggression. Subjects are as willing to obey an order to
stop shocking as they are to continue. A control condition (Variation l l ) , in
which subjects were simply asked to select their own shock levels without any
directive from the experimenter, had also shown that subjects invariably chose
the lowest shock levels.

Conforming to Disobedient Peers

Asch (1956) had shown that the most powerful inhibitor of conformity was
a situation in which subjects had an ally who defied the (otherwise) unanimous
group. Milgram performed an analogous variation (17) in which four (apparent)
subjects arrived for an experiment on the effects of “collective teaching and
punishment” on memory and learning. Only one of the individuals was a true
subject. A rigged draw produced the learner and three teachers. The script called
for the other “subjects” (assistants) to withdraw at the tenth (150 volt) and
fourteenth levels (210 volt), respectively. This defiance of authority was an
extremely powerful influence on subjects, with only 10% continuing to follow
instructions to the 450 volt level. Thus, when defiance was shown to be a
concrete behavioral option resulting in no harmful consequences, the power of
the authority and the credibility of the threatening prods (such as “you have no
other choice”) were substantially diminished.

Additional Factors Influencing Obedience

Obedience did not require that the study be conducted at a prestigious

university (Yale). Relocating the investigation in an office building in Bridge-
port, Connecticut (Variation lo), yielded only a marginally reduced obedience
rate. Could an ordinary peer be as influential as the experimenter when placed in
the role of authority? A scenario (Variation 13) was arranged in which the
experimenter would be required to leave the laboratory momentarily, thereby
creating a “need’ for one of the subjects to perform the authority role. Obedience
dropped sharply, indicating that the power of authority rests not simply upon
duties and actions but also upon one’s role status in an organization and manner-
isms-the “style” of authority.
The experimenter’s authority was challenged in one variation (9) by intro-
ducing a contractual agreement. The learner agreed to participate only if it was
stipulated, in advance, that he would be released whenever he asked to do so.
Perspectives on Obedience: Introduction 7

However, when the learner later asked to be released, the experimenter ignored
the agreement and continued issuing orders to the subject. Obedience was re-
duced to 40%, still a sizable degree of compliance under such conditions. The
power of the authority was thus intact even under conditions that might reason-
ably be viewed as delegitimizing.
How might an individual respond in this type of experiment if he or she was
not instructed personally to shock the learner, but was assigned a subsidiary task
(e.g., clerical recording) while another person was doing the actual lever press-
ing? When a peer (assistant) obeyed all orders, 37 of the 40 subjects in this
variation (93%) remained in their role and took no action in terms of leaving the
scene or rescuing the learner. In documenting the phenomenon of the “noninter-
vening bystander,” this particular experiment has been of particular interest to
those who see important elements of the nature of “evil” in the obedience experi-
ments. Milgram interpreted this important result in terms of responsibility:
Any competent manager of a destructive bureaucratic system can arrange his personnel so
that only the most callous and obtuse are directly involved in violence. The greater part of
the personnel can consist of men and women who, by virtue of their distance from the
actual acts of brutality, will feel little strain in their performance of supportive functions.
They will feel doubly absolved from responsibility. First, legitimate authority ha5 given
full warrant for their actions. Second, they have not themselves committed brutal physical
acts. (1974, p. 122)

An important experiment by Kilham and Mann (1974) verified the importance of

one’s exact location in a bureaucratic chain of command. Subjects acting as
“transmitters”-relaying the orders of the experimenter-were significantly
more obedient than subjects actually required to press the levers resulting in
apparent pain in the learner.

Summary: The Power of the Situation

The results of the complete set of experimental variations in Milgram’s

research program are extremely compelling evidence demonstrating the power of
the situation. In approximately half of the variations, the number of subjects
proceeding to 450 volts is 50% or less. In other variations, a clear majority obey
to 450 volts. For example, in Variation 18, virtually every subject was a willing
bystander who refrained from leaving the experiment when another person was
shocking the learner. It would be easy to explain such behavior as reflecting
“callousness,” “indifference,” “uninvolvement,” “a lack of empathy,” etc. How-
ever, in Condition 17, almost every subject disobeyed the experimenter if one or
two peers first provided a model for disobedience. Logically, of course, the same
types of individuals were involved in both variations (an assumption of random
assignment to experimental conditions). Yet obedience was virtually absent in
one situation, and at the bystander level, virtually total in the other.
8 Miller et al.

Many readers have interpreted Milgram’s initial obedience report ( 1963)

as suggesting that people are intrinsically subservient to the dictates of malevo-
lent authority. However, this was not Milgram’s intended message. Rather, the
primary conclusion is that most people have a surprisingly broad repertoire
of potential responses to social influence. The option actually chosen-to yield
or remain independent, to obey or to defy authority-is often a function of
precise situational arrangements rather than intrinsic characterological traits of
the person:
The degree of obedience varied sharply depending upon the exact manner in which the
variables of the experiment are arranged in an experimental condition. Yet, in the popular
press, these variations are virtually ignored, or assumed to be of only minor importance.
(1979, pp. 7-8, Preface to French edition of Obedience to Authority)

It should be noted, however, that in addition to the influence of the situa-

tion, Milgram was careful to note individual differences among his participants
which occurred in almost every contextual variation (1974, chaps. 5 and 7). In
the tabular presentations of his data, he emphasized “break off points,” indicating
precisely how far individual subjects proceeded in the shock series. Although he
was unable to account for such variation, he clearly left room and encouragement
for further conceptual work on this issue (e.g., Blass, 1991; Kelman & Ham-
ilton, 1989).

Milgram’s Theoretical Account

Regardless of the specific situation, why didn’t people simply walk out of
Milgram’s laboratory once they surmised what was developing in terms of their
inner moral conflict? Milgram ( 1 974) identified critical factors that, in the aggre-
gate, define a context that is conducive to obedience. Here we briefly review
Milgram’s own theorizing. As we indicate below (The Advantages and Disad-
vantages of the “Obedience” Metaphor), some authors in the present volume
present theoretical positions that supplement or supplant Milgram’s theoretical
analysis.

Overarching Ideology

According to Milgram, the socialization of obedience is of enormous signif-

icance. Put simply, from early childhood throughout our lives, we are taught to
obey authority and are rewarded for doing so. Obedience becomes an unques-
tioned operative norm in countless institutions and settings, many of which are
endowed with very high cultural status (what Milgram termed “overarching
ideology”)-e.g., the military, medicine, the law, religion, education, the corpo-
rate-industrial world. Successful outcomes in countless circumstances often re-
flect productive obedience to authority, whether it be a person’s grades, health,
promotions, medals, military victory, athletic performance, or recognition. We
Perspectives on Obedience: Introduction 9

learn to value obedience, even if what ensues in its name is unpleasant. We also
trust the legitimacy of the many authorities in our lives, even if abuses of this
trust occasionally occur, for example in the domains of politics, corporate finan-
cial institutions, or child-care services. In this context, people become vulnerable
to the dictates of illegitimate authority because they are habituated to presume
legitimacy and are unpracticed in the act of defying authority when this is the
appropriate response.
Also reflecting the socialization of obedience is our expectarion that some-
one will be in charge in whatever setting we encounter. Milgram’s participants
anticipated that the project would be directed by a knowledgeable authority in the
person of a research psychologist. In the mind-set of research subjects, therefore,
obedience was set into motion long before they actually arrived, before the
experimenter’s orders were issued and the learner was crying out in pain. A
major lesson of social psychology is the power of preconceptions to influence
perception and behavior so as to confirm those prior beliefs (Fiske & Taylor, 1991).
Thus, contributing to the strain involved in Milgram’s laboratory was the simple fact
that people never expected to face the prospect of defying the experimenter.

Binding Factors

Once in the process of obeying an authority, it may be extremely difficult to

extricate one’s self from that situation. These difficulties may be largely self-
generated. not a necessary reflection of the authority’s use of coercion or threat.
An important factor is the individual’s prior commitment to the authority. The
subject, having volunteered to participate, is ‘‘locked’’ into what will transpire:
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 . . . 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. ( 1974,
pp. 150-151)

Why should anyone be concerned about being “impolite” to a brutal re-

searcher? Such preoccupations, on the surface, would seem absurd. However, in
the actual context of the situation, these concerns are influential. They bind the
individual into the hierarchical structure of the relationship with authority. Thus,
in addition to the explicit orders from the authority, there are subtle, self-imposed
elements in many obedience situations that exert a pressure to remain in extraor-
dinarily unpleasant situations.

The Psychology of Escalation and Entrapment

In the obedience experiment, the individual is never ordered to inflict, at the

start, severe punishment. The question, rather, is the degree to which a person
10 Miller et al.

will gradually escalate the level of inflicted punishment under orders. Although
Modigliani and Rochat (this issue) quote Milgram to the effect that his subjects
were thrown into a swift moving stream with its own momentum, Milgram did
not give great emphasis to the temporal, incrementally developing aspect of his
experiments.
Research on a phenomenon known as “the foot in the door effect” (Freed-
man & Fraser, 1966)indicates that once an individual agrees to a relatively trivial
request, he or she is far more likely to agree to a much more demanding request
at a later time. As a result of the initial small-scaled behavior, a change in self-
perception occurs that facilitates subsequent compliance with the larger, more
demanding request. Such action then is consistent with the individual’s self-
perception as “the kind of person who agrees to do such things.” The “gradual-
ness” factor is relevant to the generalizations that have been made from Mil-
gram’s findings to other contexts where the implications of engaging in immoral
actions under authority are not realized at the start, but materialize after an
individual becomes enmeshed in a bureaucratic chain of command (Darley,
1992; Gilbert, 198 1). One reason why people underestimate the observed results
in the obedience research is that they fail to appreciate the powerful but subtle
self-perception changes that occur over the course of the experiment. (See Mil-
ler, 1986, chap. 8, for an extended critical review of Milgram’s theoretical
model).

The Ethical and Methodological Controversies

Milgram’s initial (1963) report also was the catalyst for two controversies,
one ethical, the other methodological, that were to become inextricably associ-
ated with the obedience studies. Shortly following the initial obedience report,
Diana Baumrind published an essay in the American Psychologist (1964) attack-
ing the ethics of Milgram’s treatment of his research subjects as well as the
implications and value of the investigation. A rebuttal by Milgram (1964) ap-
peared five months later. Their exchange was the impetus for a renaissance of
sensitivity to ethical issues in human experimentation. The scholarship in this
area is now voluminous. Although in many respects a highly unique form of
psychological research, the obedience experiments have been routinely featured,
for over 30 years, in any serious discussion of ethical issues in research with
human subjects.
With respect to Milgram’s specific procedure, subjects were informed in a
postexperimental interview of the deceptions involved and were introduced to the
“learner” in a spirit of “friendly reconciliation.” Milgram actually went beyond
the usual debriefing procedure, mailing to each subject a thorough account of the
basic research project (see Elms, this issue). Although there is no documented
evidence that any of his subjects experienced lasting psychological harm, Mil-
Perspectives on Obedience: Introduction 11

gram clearly approached the limits (and in the view of some, exceeded the limits)
in terms of ethical guidelines in human research, specifically in terms of respect-
ing the participant’s right to withdraw. He blatantly challenged this right, partic-
ularly in the use of increasingly constraining “prods” for those subjects hesitating
to continue administering punishment. What he learned in so doing has been of
inestimable value in the eyes of countless scholars and social scientists. Whether
or not he was ethical will depend, at least in part, on one’s position regarding the
cost/benefit analysis of the research (see Miller, 1986, chap. 5 , for an extended
discussion of the ethical controversy).
A comment is in order regarding conceptual replications of the Milgram
paradigm. In absolute terms, the number of obedience experiments, performed
by other investigators using Milgram’s paradigm, is certainly low. One can
contrast the obedience studies with two other classic research programs in social
psychology, namely the Asch conformity paradigm and the Darley and LatanC
studies on bystander intervention. As with the obedience studies, both the Asch
and the Darley and Latane methodologies involved a considerable use of decep-
tion and produced strong conflict and emotion in many of their participants. Yet,
unlike the Milgram studies, these paradigms were to stimulate numerous subse-
quent investigations. Given the extraordinary popularity and unwavering interest
in the obedience studies, it is ironic that they have not generated a correspond-
ingly large empirical literature. While the precise reasons for this circumstance
remain unclear, it is virtually certain that the ethical features of Milgram’s para-
digm have been viewed as uniquely problematic.
Given the intense ethical criticism that was to surround the obedience re-
search, essentially on the grounds that Milgram’s subjects were exposed to
unacceptably high levels of stress, it was paradoxical that a methodological
challenge also appeared shortly after the initial publication. Orne and Holland
(1968) claimed that a majority of Milgram’s subjects had operated on the overrid-
ing assumption that no serious harm or injury could be inflicted upon another
person in the context of a laboratory experiment. In Orne and Holland’s view,
there were a number of cues-“demand characteristics of the experiment”-
suggesting to subjects that no one in fact was being harmed, e.g., the experimen-
ter’s impervious manner in light of the learner’s cries of pain. According to Orne
and Holland, a variety of factors were likely to have influenced Milgram’s
subjects to behave, both in terms of administering “punishment” and expressing
anxiety, but the heart of their claim was that Milgram had not in fact demon-
strated destructive obedience to malevolent authoriiy.
A considerable literature also was to develop on this methodological contro-
versy (Miller, 1986, chap. 6). A variety of studies conducted with diverse sub-
jects (e.g., children-Shanab & Yahya, 1977), and targets of punishment (e.g.,
puppies-Sheridan & King, 1972), in nonlaboratory settings (e.g., hospital-
Hofling, Brotzman, Dalrymple, Graves, & Pierce, 1966) and in different coun-
12 Miller et al.

tries (e.g., Australia-Kilham & Mann, 1974; Netherlands-Meeus & Raaij-

makers, this issue), all demonstrated strong obedience effects and would seem to
favor clearly Milgram’s position (Miller, 1986, chaps. 4 and 6). In addition to
encouraging needed conceptual replications, the value of the methodological
debate was to remind us of the extraordinary difficulties involved in pursuing
rigorous empirical inquiry on the problem of destructive obedience.

Moving On: The Papers in This Volume

Given the unprecedented impact of Milgram’s pioneering investigation and

the crucial role that acts of destructive obedience continue to play in events, both
in large-scale world crises and in the smaller contexts of our individual lives, we
felt it appropriate to examine the nature of current research and thinking on the
issue of destructive obedience. What have we learned (and what are we learning)
about destructive obedience? What kinds of questions are being asked? What
methodological innovations are being used to answer them? In a fundamental
sense, we are focusing upon the history of Milgram’s obedience paradigm. By
“history,” we mean, specifically, the moving record of accumulated data and
thought that have been, and continue to be, inspired by Milgram’s landmark
experiments. What, then, are the themes that work their way through the present
volume?

Methodological Diversiry

One theme is the wide methodological diversity that is brought to bear on

the issues implicit in Milgram’s experimental paradigm. Several papers in this
issue represent a successful quest for multiple methodologies that yield important
insights. As Donald Campbell frequently observes, a range of diverse meth-
odologies that triangulate on the same conceptual issues is a vital criterion of
scientific inquiry (e.g., Brewer & Collins, 1981; Campbell & Fiske, 1959). This
methodological diversity is particularly of value in light of the methodological
and ethical issues that have often dominated the scientific and lay discourse
stimulated by Milgram’s paradigm. As will be shown, these concerns about the
original paradigm do nor, of course, prevent one from exploring the theoretical
and empirical issues that originally challenged Milgram as well as new issues
generated in response to Milgram’s seminal work.
One paper in the present issue (Meeus and Raaijmakers) reports data ob-
tained by using a close approximation to Milgram’s classic laboratory paradigm.
That study, consisting of a series of 19 conceptual replications and extensions,
focuses upon what they term “administrative obedience” in which subjects are
instructed to harass a job applicant taking a crucial selection test. Thus, while the
basic structure of Milgram’s paradigm is retained, the specific operationalization
Perspectives on Obedience: Introduction 13

of destructive obedience is very different. This research, conducted in the

Netherlands, has both methodological as well as conceptual relevance to Mil-
gram’s original data, and represents, in its scope, the most systematic research
program on obedience since Milgram’s own work.
Other papers also present diverse methodologies. Collins and D. Brief,
Hamilton and Sanders, and A. Brief et al. present vignettes to subjects who then
respond to systematically varied descriptions of a target person in an obedience
situation. Collins and Brief use a videotaped reenactment of Milgram’s experi-
menter-teacher-learner interaction. Hamilton and Sanders use vignettes that
depict corporate misdeeds. To study compliance with organizational requests for
racial bias, A. Brief et al. use a vignette describing job applicants. Though very
different from the Milgram paradigm, the procedures of these studies are also to
be distinguished from role-playing methodologies in which subjects predict how
they would perform or how others will perform. Subjects are asked to indicate
their real opinions and interpretations of the people and settings described in the
vignettes.
Modigliani and Rochat analyze accounts of experimenter-teacher interac-
tions available in the Milgram archive. Rochat and Modigliani also delve into
historical archives for insight into the resistance to authority displayed by the
people of Le Chambon during the German control of France in the early 1940s.
Darley provides another methodological improvisation; his dependent variable
consists of the intensity settings that subject-teachers make on a machine that
they will (presumably) use to deliver noxious blasts of noise to the learner.

Defining Obedience

Although Milgram discussed many causal forces acting on the individual in

his paradigm, his formal definition of obedience focused on any compliant act by
a subordinate in response to a request of any person at a higher level in an
organizational hierarchy (see Milgram’s formal definition of obedience, quoted
below). Following Milgram, many investigators and commentators take the posi-
tion that whenever the principal and agent are in a superior/subordinate relation-
ship in a social hierarchy, any act of compliance with a superior’s request can be
labeled “obedience.” A commonly drawn (but not necessary) corollary of this
position is that such obedience is produced by a unitary micromechanism of
social influence. Consider, as one illustration, Milgram’s concept of the agentic
state, in which subordinates are described as relinquishing a sense of personal
responsibility for their action to a superior. Given the central role of this con-
struct in his model, one might infer that the agentic shift is essential to all acts of
obedience, i.e., consistent with the idea of “obedience as a unitary phenome-
non.” The empirical evidence supporting the agentic shift, in fact, is weak
(Mantel1 & Panzarella, 1976; Miller, 1986, chap. 8).
14 Miller et al.

Raven’s (French & Raven, 1959; Raven, 1965, 1993) treatment of legiti-
mate power differs in some important respects from Milgram’s analysis of obe-
dience. According to Raven (1992, p. 220), implicitly or explicitly, the legitimate
authority states:
“I have a right to ask you to do this and you have an obligation to comply.” Thus such
terms as “obliged” or “obligated,” “should,” “ought to,” “required to” may signal the use
of legitimate power. Legitimate power is most obvious when it is based on some formal
structure-a supervisor or higher ranking military officer influencing a subordinate.

Raven describes other social norms that may mandate an obligation to comply-
such as norms of reciprocity (“1 did that for you, so you should feel obligated to
do this for me”) and equity (“1 have worked hard and suffered, so I have a right
to ask you to do something to make up for it”).
Thus Raven focuses on duty and obligation while Milgram either took no
theoretical position early on (see Elms, this issue), commented on eclectic forces
at work in the paradigm, or focused on the subordinate’s allocation of respon-
sibility to the authority when in an agentic state (1974). Raven speculates that
legitimate influence rests on social norms specifying obligations of the teacher to
the experimenter. Thus, questions about duty and obligation (not responsibility
for consequences) would tap this influence mechanism, and, according to Raven,
not all of these norms stem from relative positions in a social hierarchy. Consis-
tent with this conclusion, and in commenting on Staub’s (1989) analysis, Miller
(this issue) agrees that “obedience is not a monolithic conceptual entity.”

Diversity in Conceptual Issues and Explanations

Milgram’s findings, and his interpretations of them, do not necessarily

speak for themselves. Their meaning resides, in an important sense, in how they
are construed (Miller, this issue). Particular features can be selected or empha-
sized and provide the impetus for a variety of conceptual analyses. The papers in
this volume are thus diverse in their conceptual focus. Relying extensively on his
personal interactions and correspondence with Milgram, Alan Elms asserts that
“Milgram was not seeking to develop a grand theory of obedience,” and he
quotes Milgram’s straightforward, descriptive, atheoretical definition of obe-
dience (e.g., “If Y follows the command of X we shall say that he has obeyed X ;
if he fails to carry out the command of X , we shall say that he has disobeyed X”;
Milgram, 1965, p. 58). In contrast, Lutsky focuses on Milgram’s later (1974)
derivation of the agentic state as the centerpiece of his relatively elaborate model,
in which the agent complies with the authority’s request out of a sense of duty
and a transferring of responsibility to the authority. In a third take on Milgram’s
analyses, Modigliani and Rochat focus on other, less formal, observations that
fall outside of the agentic-state metaphor. For example, they note a relatively
early ( 1965) analogy in which Milgram compared the laboratory setting to throw-
Perspectives on Obedience: Introduction 15

ing the subjects into a “swift flowing stream;” and they quote Milgram’s saying:
“Upon entering the laboratory the individual becomes integrated into a situation
that carries its own momentum” (1965, p. 72). These portions of Milgram’s
writings support Modigliani and Rochat’s analysis, which focuses on the dynam-
ically evolving features of the experimenter-teacher encounter itself, features
that “can enhance, impede, or divert the flow that threatens to sweep subjects
inexorably toward obedience.”

Empirical Arena f o r Developing and Testing Theories of Social Interuction

For a number of reasons, including Milgram’s own substantive focus, as

well as the ethical concerns involved in literal replications of the original labora-
tory procedure, few researchers have turned to the obedience paradigm as an
empirical setting within which general theories of social interaction can be
honed. Several articles in the present issue, however, represent departures from
this state of affairs. Modigliani and Rochat, for instance, begin with a general
critique of the pervasive person-situation taxonomy of causal forces driving
social interactions. They then use the Milgram paradigm to illustrate how differ-
ent sequences of interaction (between experimenter and teacher) mediate the link
between situation and obedience or defiance. They predict-and observe-that
the earlier in the sequence of experimenter-teacher interactions the participants
begin to resist (by posing questions and objections), the more likely they are to
disobey. Their analysis supports the more general theoretical position that social
interactions cannot be completely traced to fixed inputs from person, situation,
and person-situation interactions.
Collins and D. Brief propose that behaviors have symbolic meanings. They
then turn to obedience and disobedience in the classic Milgram paradigm as an
empirical context in which to illustrate the symbolic meanings of these socially
significant, familiar behaviors. Their results tell us something about strategies
for defiance, but they also illustrate the more general assertion that behaviors
have symbolic meanings. In his effort to develop a general taxonomy of princi-
pal-agent relationships, Darley uses the Milgram experiment as an example of
one (ecologically atypical, he argues) of the four cells in his 2 x 2 taxonomy.
Darley’s analysis adds to our understanding of the Milgram paradigm, but his
primary focus is in formulating a broader theory of principal-agent interactions.
Several papers also incorporate diverse intellectual traditions that are rele-
vant to destructive obedience. A . Brief et al. frame their study in terms of
organizational theory. Darley draws heavily from legal theory about principals
and their agents. Drawing from social cognition, Collins and D. Brief suggest
that some of the interpretations of participants in the Milgram scenario are
generated by unconscious, automatic information processing. As noted earlier,
the historical context of destructive obedience was of vital significance to Mil-
16 Miller et al.

gram. Three of the papers in this issue (Miller, Lutsky, and Rochat and Mo-
digliani) address different elements of the historical perspective.

Defiance

At first glance, of course, one reflexively thinks of Milgram as obviously

preoccupied with destructive obedience. From a different perspective, however,
his contributions can also be viewed as dealing with problems of dissent. As
noted earlier, in a number of his experimental variations, dissent was clearly the
modal response. In this context, several articles in this issue focus on defiance.
Darley, for example, identifies what he terms constructive obedience in which
the subject implements goals set by the authority but not in terms of the means
and actions specified by the authority.
It is important to note that Milgram’s subjects were forced, by the design of
the study, to invent their own means of defiance. It was, in essence, “messy,”
with each reservation of the subject met by an insistent researcher who, in his
scripted role as a stoic, resolute scientist, never acknowledged the merit of the
subject’s compassion for the learner. In this context, Ross and Nisbett (1991)
have noted a basic finding in social psychology, namely that people will often,
for a variety of reasons, fail to behave in a manner consistent with their personal
attitudes unless there are “channel factors” that facilitate correspondent action.
Witnessing successful defiance on the part of a peer in Variation 17 illustrates
one such channel factor, and disobedience was virtually total in this condition.
This focus on defiance (in contrast to obedience) is also represented in both of the
Modigliani and Rochat papers, which analyze the interaction sequences that
presage defiance, and in Collins and D. Brief, who compare different styles of
defiance.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of the “Obedience” Metaphor

Another conceptual question revolves around advantages and disadvantages

of the term “obedience” to describe both laboratory and naturalistic occurrences
of evil-doing. In the preceding section, we pointed to a variety of new and
elaborated theoretical explanations for the high rates of compliance in the classic
paradigm. Several authors in this issue offer an even more fundamental challenge
to Milgram’s conceptualization, and analyze the usefulness of the “obedience”
label itself. This is the central thesis of Lutsky’s article, in which he distinguishes
obedience as a description of the teacher’s behavior from obedience as a theoreti-
cal explanation for that behavior. Lutsky also focuses on how subjects are
constrained by the norms and emergent dynamics of social interaction (many of
which are unrelated to the superior/subordinate role relationship) as a causal
force on the teacher’s behavior. Collins and D. Brief note that many of the norms
Perspectives on Obedience: Introduction 17

of appropriate social interaction that restrain the teacher from discontinuing the
shocks would apply whether or not the two interactants were in a superior-
subordinate relationship.
Miller notes that Staub (1989) discusses a variety of important social-psy-
chological processes that function, in addition to obedience to authority, as
determinants of genocide and other politically sanctioned massacres. These in-
clude

the initial feelings of hostility driven by perceived threats or difficult life circumslances,
the devaluation of outgroups, the entrapment involved in a gradual progression of increas-
ingly dehumanizing actions, and the role of bystanders-their actions or, more signifi-
cantly, their non actions.

Staub is quoted (by Miller and by Lutsky) to indicate that the focus on obedience
may have slowed the analysis of genocide-presumably by obscuring other
causal determinants of evil. Others have objected to the obedience focus because
it serves to excuse the destructively obedient individual from blame. Lutsky
contrasts the intentionalist (obedience) explanation of the Holocaust with func-
tional explanations, which “see the Holocaust as evolving from bureaucratic
developments and rivalries, improvisation, individual and group initiatives, and
other external conditions and forces.”
We would agree that the pendulum may have swung too far in the direction
of explaining socially sanctioned evil solely as a consequence of obedience to
authority. However, as Miller (this issue) indicates, Milgram’s work is the prima-
ry reason that we consider ordinary psychological processes as sources of evil-
and that we are “intellectually comfortable” in presuming that this is a viable
perspective to pursue. Further, we agree with Elms that Milgram probably would
not have been disappointed if his data remained figural while theoretical explana-
tions evolved across time. He indicated to one of us (AM) that his greatest
frustration was that the controversies associated with the obedience studies had
diverted attention from his original and lasting concern, the nature of obedience
to authority. It is our hope that the ideas considered in this issue will serve as a
catalyst for further discussion and research on the substantive features of destruc-
tive obedience.

Organization of the Papers

We have divided the papers in this issue into two sections. The first, “The
Obedience Paradigm: Origins, Historical Contexts, and Contemporary Views on
its Meaning,” contains papers by Elms, Miller, Lutsky, Hamilton and Sanders,
and Collins and Brief. The second section, “Analyzing Obedient and Disobe-
dient Behavior,” contains papers by Modigliani and Rochat, Darley, Meeus and
Raaijmakers, A . Brief et al., and Rochat and Modigliani.
18 Miller et al.

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ARTHUR G. MILLER is a professor of psychology at Miami University. He

received his Ph.D. in personality-social psychology from Indiana University in
1967. His research interests have centered on biases in causal attribution, the
effects of preconceptions on social judgment, factors that influence the process-
ing of health information, and stereotyping. He has edited In the Eye of the
Beholder: Contemporary Issues in Stereotyping. He has also had a continuing
interest in the substantive, methodological, and ethical implications of Milgram’s
experiments on obedience to authority. His major publications on the Milgram
studies include an edited volume, The Social Psychology of Psychological Re-
search, and The Obedience Experiments: A Case Study of Controversy in Social
Science.

BARRY E. COLLINS was a student of Donald Campbell’s. He received his

Ph.D. in social psychology in 1963 and was an assistant professor at Yale
University. Since 1966, he has been at the University of California, Los Angeles.
His books include Social Psychology, Social Psychology of Group Processes for
Decision Making (co-authored with Harold Guetzkow), and Attitude Change: A
Critical Analysis of Theoretical Approaches (co-authored with Chuck Kiesler and
Norman Miller). In 1971, he served as editor for a special nonthematically
organized issue of JSI. Most recently, he has been interested in self and social-
identity images as causes of behavior and in the application of these images to an
understanding of obedience and AIDS-related behaviors.

DIANA E. BRIEF received her M.A. in psychology in 1992 and is currently a

doctoral student in measurement and psychometrics at the University of Califor-
nia, Los Angeles. Her publications include “A Profile of Personality for a Rus-
sian Sample: As Indicated by the Comrey Personality Scales” and “The Comrey
Personality Scales in Russian: A Study of Concurrent, Predictive, and External
Validity.” She has presented several papers that concern observers’ reactions to
destructive obedience and has contributed, through her participation in the 1992
Conference on Psychology in the C.I.S., to the making of government policies
regarding the conduct of American-Russian cross-national research.

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