In 2002, theReview of General Psychologylisted Milgram as the 46th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century.

Stanley Milgram

Stanley Milgram

Who Is Stanley Milgram?Stanley Milgram’s Early LifeEducational BackgroundMilgram’s Obedience ExperimentThe Lost-Letter TechniqueThe Small World ProblemCriticisms of Milgram’s TheoryStanley Migram Books, Awards, and AccomplishmentsPersonal LifeIs Stanley Milgram Still Alive?

Who Is Stanley Milgram?

Stanley Milgram’s Early Life

Educational Background

Milgram’s Obedience Experiment

The Lost-Letter Technique

The Small World Problem

Criticisms of Milgram’s Theory

Stanley Migram Books, Awards, and Accomplishments

Personal Life

Is Stanley Milgram Still Alive?

Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist, researcher, and author. He is best known for his infamous obedience experiment. Milgram’s work contributed significantly to a deeper understanding of human nature and helped to establish ethical standards for future psychology experiments.

Stanley Milgram was born on August 15, 1933, in the Bronx, New York. He was the second of three children born to Samuel and Adele Milgram, working-class Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Milgram’s mother was from Romania and his father, from Hungary. His father was a baker and his mother worked in the bakery.

Samuel and Adele Milgram were hardworking people who impressed upon their children the importance of education and having a profession. Milgram’s sister, Marjorie, was a year and a half older than he was, and his brother, Joel, was five years younger. Stanley enjoyed a very close relationship with Joel, who was always proud of his older brother’s achievements.

The Milgram family lived in a neighbourhood that consisted primarily of Jewish immigrants. As a child, Milgram had very little interaction with, or knowledge about, the non-Jewish world. The year of his birth was also the year Adolf Hitler took control of Germany, and with the rise of Nazism, his parents became increasingly concerned about the welfare of their Jewish relatives in Europe. Milgram witnessed their constant worry and as a boy, often huddled with them around the radio listening anxiously to news about the war that had broken out in Europe.

The events in Europe had a significant impact on Milgram, who identified with the suffering of his fellow Jews at the hands of the Nazis. In his bar mitzvah speech, he reflected on their tragic fate and referred to it as part of his own heritage. His concern over the Jewish community in Europe remained with him long into adulthood and even helped to shape his famous obedience experiments.

Philip Zimbardo and Stanley Milgram

Milgram attended James Monroe High School in the Bronx, where he became classmates with another future prominent psychologist,Philip Zimbardo. His primary focus during this time was on getting into college and excelling academically. Milgram was a member of Arista, an honor society, and served as an editor for the school paper. He also had an interest in drama and assisted with stagecraft for his school’s productions.

After completing high school, Milgram attended Queens College, which later became part of the City University of New York (CUNY). While there, he was appointed vice president of the International Relations Club and the Debating Club. He graduated in 1954 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. By that time, however, Milgram had become dissatisfied with the philosophical nature of political science. His interest shifted to social psychology which he believed offered a more practical approach to the issues that were of interest to him. For example, he wanted to better understand how Hitler was able to seize control of Germany and initiate the Holocaust.

Milgram applied for graduate studies in social psychology at Harvard but was initially rejected as he had no background in psychology. Determined to pursue his goal, he signed up for several psychology courses during the summer of 1954 at three different institutions - Hunter College, Brooklyn College, and New York University. He was later admitted to Harvard in the fall of that year and was awarded a Ford Foundation fellowship to pursue his studies. He graduated with a PhD in social psychology in 1960.

What Inspired Stanley Milgram to Study Social Influence?

Several faculty members at Harvard had a significant impact on Milgram’s academic and professional career, including prominent psychologists Jerome Bruner, Gordon Allport, and Roger Brown. His greatest scientific influence, however, wasSolomon Asch, who served as a visiting lecturer at Harvard from 1955 to 1956. During that time, Milgram worked as Asch’s teaching and research assistant, getting a firsthand view of his experiments.

Milgram was particularly interested in Asch’s conformity studies and adapted Asch’s methods to a study of cross-cultural differences in conformity between Norway and France. He spent eighteen months between Oslo and Paris conducting this research which served as the basis of his doctoral dissertation. The study was completed under the direction of Gordon Allport. Between 1959 and 1960, Milgram took a part time job as a research (and editing) assistant to Asch at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

At the start of the experiment, the teacher watched as the learner was taken to a room, strapped securely to a chair, and fitted with electrodes. The teacher was then taken to a second room and seated in front of an electric shock generator. There were thirty switches on the shock generator and they were labeled from 15 volts (Slight Shock) to 375 volts (Danger: Severe Shock) to 450 volts (XXX). The fact that no real electric shocks were involved in the study was kept secret from the teacher. An experimenter (or authority figure) was also present in the room with the teacher to help direct the experiment. Only a screen separated the room with the learner from the second room with the teacher and the experimenter.

The learner intentionally gave wrong answers on the word tests. As a result, the teacher was required to shock the learner for each wrong answer while increasing the voltage each time. As the “shocks” increased in voltage, the teacher was able to hear the learner banging on the wall, screaming, protesting, and begging from the adjoining room. If the teacher refused to shock the learner any further, the experimenter (authority figure) would give the teacher a simple order to continue the experiment.

The experimenter also assured the teacher that he (the experimenter) would assume full responsibility for anything that happened. The experiment was stopped if (1) the teacher refused to shock the learner after the fourth prod from the experimenter, or (2) if the teacher gave three 450 volt shocks to the learner.

In Milgram’s obedience experiment all the subjects (teachers) administered shocks of up to 300 volts. Although many were reluctant, 65% of the subjects maintained their obedience to the experimenter and administered the highest possible shock of 450 volts. The experiment was repeated several times with consistent results.

Milgram proposed two theories to explain why normal people would obey an order even if it meant they may severely hurt or kill another person. These are:

Variations of Milgram’s obedience experiment showed that the teacher was more likely to obey instructions to shock the learner if the learner was in a completely separate room. Milgram believed the incremental manner of increasing the shocks also contributed to obedience. Before conducting the experiment, Milgram conducted a poll among the psychology students at Yale to predict what the outcome of the experiment would be. Very few people, including Milgram, expected any of the subjects to administer the most intense shock.

Milgram’s experiment remains one of themost talked-about experimentsin the history of psychology.

In 1967, Milgram designed the “small-world experiment.” He was curious about how many acquaintances it took to connect two people who didn’t know each other. To find the answer, he sent packages to 160 random people in Omaha, Nebraska, with instructions to send the package to someone they knew who they thought could get it closer to its final destination—a stock broker in Boston, Massachusetts. Along with the package, each original sender was also asked to forward the same set of instructions they had received.

By the time the packages arrived in Boston, some chains had as many as ten acquaintances while others had as few as two. Milgram concluded that there were five acquaintances (or six degrees of separation) between the original senders in Omaha and the final recipient in Boston.

Applications of Milgram’s Obedience Theory

Although it was already well known that people have a tendency to obey authority figures, Milgram’s experiment showed that, in certain settings, individuals may obey destructive orders that conflict with their moral principles and do things they would never decide to do on their own. Milgram believed that once these individuals allowed an authority figure to direct their actions, they also gave up the responsibility of distinguishing what was right from what was wrong.

The findings from Milgram’s obedience experiment have been applied to several fields. Some of these include:

Milgram’s obedience experiment also sheds light on actions people can take to resist unwanted pressure from authority figures. These actions include:

Despite making a major cultural and scholarly impact, the Milgram Obedience Experiment is one of the most widely criticized psychology studies in history. It has been criticized for three primary reasons:

Ethics

many critics claim the experiment was unethical because it caused many of the subjects to experience severe distress. Some subjects were seen sweating and trembling due to their discomfort but were told to continue the experiment. Also, Milgram did not debrief the subjects immediately after their participation ended. The subjects were not informed about the true intentions of the study and Milgram did not explain why deception was necessary.

Suggested Relevance to the Holocaust

Validity

In January 1961, Milgram met Alexandra Menkin at a party in Manhattan and the two got married in December of that year. Alexandra, who Milgram fondly called Sasha, was a social worker and spent much of her time assisting Holocaust survivors. The couple had two children, Michele and Marc, and Milgram enjoyed playing with, and caring for them.

Philantrophy

Milgram also gave generously of his time and energy to students, colleagues, and even strangers, responding to virtually all of the many letters he received. He developed several interests outside of academia, including painting, drawing, music composition, and film-making. At home, he would develop fictional plot lines for movies in which his children performed as the stars. He also wrote children’s stories and poems and in his later years, became more keenly interested in the religious and spiritual aspects of the Jewish faith.

Milgram maintained his interest in science and tried to keep abreast of the latest scientific breakthroughs and the scientists behind them. He also spent a great deal of time thinking of and carefully recording various inventions and games. Among these was a machine for rewinding carbon ribbons used in typewriters and a board game centered on the world of art, including auctions and collections.

In 1980, Milgram experienced the first of several major heart attacks. He died of his fifth heart attack in 1984. He was 51 years of age.

American Psychological Association. (2004).Obeying and resisting malevolent orders. Retrieved fromhttps://www.apa.org/research/action/order

Blass, T. (1996). Stanley Milgram: A life of inventiveness and controversy. In G. A. Kimble, C. A. Boneau, & M. Wertheimer (Eds.),Portraits of pioneers in psychology: Volume 2(pp.315-331). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Korn, J. H. (1997).Illusions of reality: A history of deception in social psychology. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Milgram, A. (2000). My personal view of Stanley Milgram. In T. Blass (Ed.),Obedience to authority: Current perspectives on the Milgram paradigm(pp.1-7). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum

Perry, G. (2013).Behind the shock machine: The untold story of the notorious Milgram psychology experiments. New York: The New Press.

Rogers, K. (n.d.). Stanley Milgram. InEncyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved fromhttps://www.britannica.com/biography/Stanley-Milgram/Later-experiments-and-publications

Stanley Milgram. (n.d.). Retrieved fromhttps://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/stanley-milgram

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