Stanley Milgram (August 15, 1933 – December 20, 1984) was an American
social psychologist most notable for his controversial study known as the
Milgram Experiment. The study was conducted in the 1960s during Milgram's professorship at
Yale.
Milgram was influenced by the events of the Holocaust to carry out an experiment which would prove the relationship between obedience and authority. Shortly after the obedience experiment, Milgram conducted the
small-world experiment (the source of the
six degrees of separation concept) while at
Harvard.
Biography
Stanley Milgram was born in 1933 to a Jewish family in New York City. Milgram's father, Samuel, worked as a baker to provide a modest income for his family until his death in 1953 (upon which Stanley's mother, Adele, took over the bakery). Despite Stanley's relatively normal familial situation, Milgram excelled academically and was a great leader among his peers. In 1954, Milgram received his Bachelor's Degree in Political Science from
Queens College, New York where he attended tuition-free.
. He applied to a
Ph.D. program in
social psychology at
Harvard University and was initially rejected due to an insufficient background in psychology (he had not taken one undergraduate course in psychology while attending Queens College). He was eventually accepted to Harvard in 1954 after first enrolling as a student in Harvard's Office of Special Students.
Milgram was granted his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Harvard in 1960. Most likely because of his controversial
Milgram Experiment, Milgram was denied tenure at Harvard after becoming an assistant professor there, but instead accepted an offer to become a tenured full professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (Blass, 2004). Milgram had a number of significant influences, including psychologists
Solomon Asch and
Gordon Allport (Milgram, 1977). Milgram influenced numerous psychologists including Alan C. Elms, who was Milgram's first graduate assistant in the study of obedience. Milgram died on December 20, 1984 of a
heart attack in the city he was born,
New York. He left behind a widow, Alexandra "Sasha" Milgram, and two children.
Obedience to authority
In 1963, Milgram submitted the results of his
Milgram experiments in the article "Behavioral study of Obedience". In the ensuing controversy that erupted, the
APA held up his application for membership for a year because of questions about the ethics of his work, but then granted him full membership. Ten years later, in 1974, Milgram published
Obedience to Authority and was awarded the annual social psychology award by the
AAAS (mostly for his work over the social aspects of obedience). Inspired in part by the 1961 trial of
Adolf Eichmann, his models were later also used to explain the 1968
My Lai Massacre (including authority training in the military, depersonalizing the "enemy" through racial and cultural differences, etc.).
Milgram's Experiment 18: A Peer Administers Shocks.
In this experiment, 37 out of 40 participants administered the full range of shocks up to 450 volts, the highest obedience rate Milgram found in his whole series. In this variation, the actual subject did not pull the shock lever; instead he only conveyed information to the peer (a confederate) who pulled the lever. Thus, according to Milgram, the subject shifts responsibility to another person and does not blame himself for what happens. This resembles real-life incidents in which people see themselves as merely cogs in a wheel, just "doing their job", allowing them to avoid responsibility for the consequences of their actions.
Small World Phenomenon
The
six degrees of separation concept originates from Milgram's "small world experiment" in 1967 that tracked chains of acquaintances in the United States. In the experiment, Milgram sent several packages to 160 random people living in Omaha, Nebraska, asking them to forward the package to a friend or acquaintance whom they thought would bring the package closer to a set final individual, a stockbroker from Boston, Massachusetts.
Milgram's "six degrees" theory has been severely criticized. He did not follow up on many of the sent packages, and as a result, scientists are unconvinced that there are merely "six degrees" of separation. Elizabeth DeVita–Raebu has discussed potential problems with Dr. Milgrams's experiment.
In 2008, a study by Microsoft showed that the average chain of contacts between users of its
.NET Messenger Service was 6.6 people.
Lost letter experiment
Milgram developed a technique for measuring how helpful people are to strangers who are not present, and their attitudes toward various groups, called the "lost letter" experiment. Several sealed and stamped letters are planted in public places, addressed to various entities, such as individuals, favorable organizations like medical research institutes, and stigmatized organizations such as "Friends of the Nazi Party". Milgram found most of the letters addressed to individuals and favorable organizations were mailed, while most of those addressed to stigmatized organizations were not.
Anti-social behavior experiment
In 1970-71, Milgram conducted experiments which attempted to find a correlation between media consumption (in this case, watching television) and anti-social behavior. The experiment presented the opportunity to steal money, donate to charity, or neither, and tested whether the rate of each choice was influenced by watching similar actions in the ending of a specially crafted episode of the popular series
Medical Center.
References in media
In 1976,
CBS presented a made-for-television movie about obedience experiments:
The Tenth Level with
William Shatner as Stephen Hunter, a Milgram-like scientist. Milgram himself was a consultant for the film, though his personal life did not resemble that of the Shatner character. In this film, incidents were portrayed that never occurred in the followup to the real life experiment, including a subject's psychotic episode and the main character saying that he regretted the experiment. When asked about the film, Milgram told one of his graduate students,
Sharon Presley, that he was not happy with the film and told her that he did not want his name to be used in the credits.
The French political thriller
I... comme Icare includes a key scene where Milgram's experiment on obedience to authority is explained and shown.
In Alan Moore's graphic novel,
V for Vendetta, the character Dr. Delia Surridge discusses Milgram's experiment without directly naming Milgram, comparing it with the atrocities she herself had performed in the Larkhill Concentration camps.
In 1986, musician
Peter Gabriel wrote a song called
We do what we're told (Milgram's 37), referring to the number of subjects (out of 40) who obeyed the experimenters all the way in Milgram's authority experiment, Milgram 18.
The award-winning short film
Atrocity (2005) re-enacts Milgram's
Obedience to Authority experiment.
In 2008, folk musician,
Dar Williams, released a song called "Buzzer", in which the narrator participated in the Milgram experiment. After being debriefed, the narrator realizes that evil is not committed by an unreachable other, but instead ordinary people and every day.
2008 Episode
Law and Order: SVU "Authority" Detective Munch mentions Milgram's experiment referring to corporate training at Mcjobs.
See also
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