Full Blog, "Obedience to Authority"

Obedience to Authority
Stanley Milgram
New York: Harper & Row, 1974

Summary
The book describes in great detail the results of Stanley Milgram's now famous fake electroshock experiments, and then describes in depth Milgram's psychological theories as to why he got the results he did.

The first section describes many different variations on the original experiment, and shows all the data (how many people cut off at which shock level in each variation, etc) in chart form for all of them. It also describes the cases of a few individuals in transcript level detail.

The second draws heavily on evolutionary theory to explain why people need the hierarchy Milgram feels his experiment shows they do, and what the effects of being "morally asleep" are. He cites additional supporting evidence for his positions.

Discussions
I'm going to say the nice things first. First, Milgram did a far better job of explaining his experiment and making his case than Mrs. Slater did for him. No surprise, but I felt it worth mentioning. Second, the level of detail was excellent.

Now the two criticisms: First, I still don't think the experiment shows what he thinks it does. I don't think the driving factor is obedience to authority; Authority is surely a factor, but I don't think it overrides morality in the way Milgram thinks it does. Rather, what I think is shown here that if you give people diametrically opposite social cues you will succeed in confuse them, hardly a groundbreaking revelation, but not really what most people seem to think this experiment shows.

Compare it to the experiment from a different chapter of Opening Skinner's Box. In the one I'm talking about, one subject, sometimes with one to five actors paid not to react, is sitting in a room where fake smoke is pumped in. Of course, the subject always reported it when by himself, but rates dropped precipitously when the actors were present. This is the same thing; when there were individuals in the room not acting as if there was fire, he at some level questioned (correctly) if there was actually a fire. Note that this situation shows very similar results in spite of having no authority telling him not to react to the smoke, and no strong moral component (rather, self preservation being the driving factor here).

I think that a far better explanation for the results here is that, at some level, the subjects questioned (correctly) if there was actually any danger to the subject, whether they realized it or not. FWIW, that destroys the Nazi analogy Milgram tries so hard to make entirely.

My second objection is to the assertion that beating one person to death with a rock is morally less objectionable than killing ten thousand with artillery. With both actions happening entirely in a vacuum I'd agree, but that isn't what is implied. Rather, beating one person to death with a rock is almost certainly a murder, where the death of thousands to artillery is a military action.

Now, if you remember your Clausewitz, you will recall that war is an attempt to achieve political aims by force, whereas a murder is either utterly pointless or serves only selfish ends. The simple fact of the matter is that killing 10,000* to save a million is morally less objectionable (at the very least!) than offing one man so you can have his wallet. Milgram's blanket assertion otherwise, frankly, is offensive to my intelligence.

*Don't think for a second I'm asserting that this is something that is fun or should be taken or done lightly; I am, however, asserting that it is sometimes necessary.