Obedience To Authority - Full Blog

Reference

Obedience to Authority

Stanley Milgram

Harper Perennial Modern Classics - 2009

Summary

This book provides a detailed account of the planning and execution of several experiments designed by Stanley Milgram to test the effects of authority. The main premise of the experiment is to see how long someone will obey authority despite their belief that they are causing harm to another human being. The setup includes an actor pretending to be injured by a shock administered by a participant during a learning game. The authority figure instructions the participant to continue. Results show that most people continue even when the actor expresses severe pain and a desire to quit.Special attention is given to providing a complete set of information detailing the experimental setups and all possible variations of the experiment. Raw data is presented as well. Additionally, Milgram works to define the theory of the mechanisms which are in action during these experiments. Milgram explains the hierarchical structure of obedience from a cybernetic viewpoint of people moving from functioning autonomously to being an active part of an organization. Finally, Milgram works to address critics of his experiments by citing reasons their claims cannot be true.

Discussion

I enjoyed reading the details of Milgrams experiments. Up until this point I did not realize the magnitude of the many variations and validations he performed. I particularly enjoyed the presentation of the dialogue between the participant and the researcher. I also appreciated the methodical way that Milgram planned his experiments and validated them. In terms of Computer Science I think this first shows us how important user studies can be, and reminds us that we should spend the extra time to validate our results. It is also interesting to me, as my research is in rescue robotics, where we may want to attribute an authority role to a robot for a number of reasons. It is both challenging and interesting to try and apply Milgram's findings to this area.