The filmed segment of Milgrams obedience studies shows a research participant who

MILGRAM'S VARIATIONSLATER STUDIES INVESTIGATING SITUATIONAL VARIABLES

In 1974, Milgram published Obedience To Authority, a book describing his original study and 19 ‘Variations’. These Variations investigate other factors that influence obedience.

Taken together, these Variations turn the research into a

lab experiment, with the baseline (original) study as the Control Group and the Variations as the IV. The DV remains the level of obedience shown, measured by the maximum voltage participants would go to.

• Variation #5is the “Empathy Variation”. Milgram changed the script so that Mr Wallace mentioned a heart condition at the start and at 150V he started complaining about chest pains. Compared to the baseline study, more participants dropped out at 150V, long before the Learner went silent at 300V. However, participants who continued after 150V seemed to feel they had “passed a point of no return” and continued all the way to 450V. Burger (2009)uses this variation as the basis for his Contemporary Study.
• Variation #8used a sample of 40 women. Their obedience levels turned out to be 65%, the same as the men’s.

Students are required to have specific knowledge of these three Variations:

VARIATION #7: ABSENT AUTHORITY

In the original study, the Experimenter (Mr Williams) sits at a desk right behind the Teacher.

In this Variation, the Experimenter gives the participants their instructions at the start, then leaves the Teacher alone in the room with the shock generator and a telephone. If the Teachers have questions or doubts, they must phone the Experimenter. The “prods” are delivered over the telephone.

• There was a significant drop in obedience, down to 9 (22.5%), and some participants gave lower shocks than they were told to do (because they thought they were unobserved).
• Milgram concludes that the physical presence of an authority figure is important for obedience.

VARIATION #10: INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT (the "Bridgeport" Variation)

The original study was carried out at Yale University, in rather grand surroundings.

In this Variation, Milgram moves the study to a run-down office in the busy town of Bridgeport. There is nothing to make the participants link things to the University: Mr Williams claims to work for a private research firm.

• There was a drop in obedience to 19 (45.5%), but Milgram didn’t think this was big enough to be significant. Participants showed more doubts and asked more questions. One of them made notes as if they intended to make a complaint later and another one objected that the study was “heartless”.
  
• Milgram concludes that the setting is not as important for obedience as the status of the authority figure.
  

VARIATION #13/13a: ORDINARY AUTHORITY FIGURE

The original study used Mr Williams as the Experimenter, who looked severe and wore a lab coat. In this Variation, Mr Williams explains the procedure to the participant but then is called away. Crucially, Mr Williams does not tell the Teachers to increase the shock by 15V with each incorrect answer.

There is a second confederate present, who seems to be another participant, given the job of “writing down the times” of each test. With the Experimenter gone, this confederate suggests “a new way of doing the study,” taking the voltage up by 15V each time there’s a mistake.

• Only 20 participants did this Variation and only 4 (20%) obeyed by going to 450V.
• Milgram concludes that the status of the authority figure is important, but other features of the situation (the instructions, the shock generator) still create obedience.

In Variation 13a, Milgram uses the 16 “rebel” participants from Variation #13.

In other words, as soon as the participants in Variation #13 rebelled, Milgram moved into the procedure for #13a with them. From the participants' viewpoint, it seemed like the same study continuing, not a new one starting.

The confederate suggests swapping places: now the confederate gives the shocks and the disobedient participant writes down the times. The participant is now a bystander, watching someone else deliver the shocks.

• All 16 participants protested. Five of them tried to unplug the shock generators or restrain the confederate physically. However, 11 (68.75%) allowed the confederate to go to 450V.
  

Milgram concludes that people are more willing to be bystanders than to intervene to prevent the abuse of authority

often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act - Stanley Milgram

THE AFTERMATH OF THE STUDYPUBLIC UPROAR & WHAT MILGRAM DID NEXT

When the original study was published in 1963, there was a backlash. Several newspapers condemned Yale University for treating participants so badly. Despite the support of his professor (Gordon Allport), Milgram lost his job, a disappointment he never got over.

Child psychologist Diana Baumrind (1964)published a criticism of the ethics of Milgram’s study: she complained that Milgram had ignored the “wellbeing” of the participants, deceiving them and putting them through traumatic stress. procedures which involve loss of dignity, self-esteem, and trust in rational authority are probably most harmful in the long run - Diana Baumrind

Milgram (1964b)replied with these points:

• After the end of the study, Milgram debriefedhis participants (this is now standard procedure but Milgram was one of the first researchers to do this); he explained the truth to them, introduced them to Mr Wallace (alive and well) and checked that they were in a comfortable mental state.
  
• 40 participants were interviewed by a psychiatrist a year later and only 2 expressed lasting distress about their part in the study, but they were willing to do it again.
• A questionnaire was sent out to all the participants in all the Variations (see below) and only 1% expressed criticism of the way they had been treated by 84% said they were “glad” or “very glad” to have participated.
• Milgram  pointed out that before the study he had approached his own students, colleagues and professional psychiatrists and no one had suspected that obedience would be as high as it turned out
  

Relatively few subjects experienced greater tension than a nail-biting patron at a good Hitchcock thriller - Stanley Milgram

The American Psychological Association (APA) cleared Milgram of any wrongdoing, but went on to publish the first “Ethical Guidelines” for researchers. These guidelines would make it impossible for Milgram to replicate his studies (however, he had already carried out his Variations by then). Burger (2009)is an example of how Milgram’s study could be replicated while staying within the APA Guidelines.

Milgram died in 1984 after a series of heart attacks. Ironically, if the stress of the studies harmed anyone, it was Milgram himself!

I would say, on the basis of having observed a thousand people in the experiments ... that if a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized American town - Stanley Milgram (1979 interview)