Anxiety

In 1961, Stanley Milgram conducted a series of studies on how authority affects one’s willingness to obey, which later became some of the most famous research experiments in the history of psychology. After his experiments; however, Institutional Review Boards were created to protect research participants and to uphold ethical principles. It has been decades since anyone has received permission to replicate Milgram’s experiment, but two years ago Jerry Burger did just that. The results appear in the January issue of American Psychologist.

In Milgram’s experiment, he told the participants who volunteered for the experiment that they would either be the teacher or the learner in an experiment examining the effects of punishment on learning. The participants were always the teachers while a confederate of Milgram’s acted as the learner.

The volunteers were instructed to read questions on a test of verbal memory to the “learners,” who were in an adjoining room. Each time the learner gave an incorrect answer, the teacher was instructed to give him an electric shock. Additionally, each time the learner answered a question wrong, he received shocks on increasingly higher intensity from 15-450 volts.

In the beginning, the learner was silent when he received shocks for wrong answers. However, the learner began to cry out in pain when he received shocks of 150 volts and higher. However, 79% of the participants continued to administer shocks to the learner right up until the end, administering the highest shock of 450 volts.

Burger’s experiment was slightly different in order to meet the ethical standards of Institutional Review Boards. He paid volunteers $50 for participating in the experiment. Additionally, each volunteer was interviewed by a psychologist before the experiment in order to ensure he or she would not have a negative reaction to the study.

Burger also ensured that all of the volunteers had not taken more than two psychology classes and/or did not have familiarity with the Milgram experiment. The participants were also told three times during the study that they could stop anytime they wanted to and still receive the $50 compensation.

Finally, Burger only allowed participants to pass the 150 voltage mark when administering shocks. The participants received a slight shock of 15 volts in order to get an idea of what the learner would be receiving when he answered a question incorrectly.

Surprisingly, Burger’s results were not significantly different than Milgram’s. He discovered that despite cries of pain when being shocked, participants passed the 150 voltage point. In fact, 70% of the participants had to be stopped after they passed the 150-voltage point in Burger’s study, a result that was not found to be significantly different from Milgram’s finding that 82.5% of participants passed the 150-voltage shock point.

Burger asserts that he can make a guess as to how many individuals would continue on to the end of the experiment given his data on how many individuals administered a shock higher than 150 volts:

“Nearly four out of five of Milgram’s participants who continued after 150 volts went all the way to the end of the shock generator. Because of this pattern, knowing how participants react at the 150-volt juncture allows us to make a reasonable guess about what they would have done if we had continued with the complete procedure.”

However, several other researchers wonder how comparable Burger’s study is to Milgram’s.

What do you think? Please tell me what you think in the comments section below. Tomorrow, I will discuss the theories behind why individuals may continue to shock the learners in the experiment even though he cries out in pain when he receives the 150 volt shock.

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Sources:

Psych Central: People Will Still Torture Others When Ordered to Do So

Peter Gray. (2002). Psychology. (4th Ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.

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