The Man Who Shocked The World

Thomas Blass probes into the life of Stanley Milgram, the man who uncovered some disturbing truths about human nature.

By Thomas Blass, published on March 01, 2002 - last reviewed on August 13, 2008

Linsly-Chittenden Hall on Yale's old campus is easy to miss—an improbable hybrid of Romanesque and neo-Gothic styles that sits in the shadow of the magnificent clock-arch straddling High Street. But in July 1961, the building hummed with an unusual amount of activity as people came and went through its doors at hourly intervals. The increased traffic was due to the arrival and departure of participants in an experiment with unexpected findings that would make it one of the most significant—and controversial—psychological studies of the 20th century.

The research was the brainchild of 28-year-old Stanley Milgram, then a recent graduate with a Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard's department of social relations. The name Stanley Milgram may not elicit the kind of instant recognition as, say, Sigmund Freud. And though he was something of a Renaissance man, making films and writing poetry, Stanley Milgram was no Sigmund Freud: He did not attempt an all-encompassing theory of behavior; no school of thought bears his name. But what he did do—rather than probe the interior of the human psyche—was to try to expose the external social forces that, though subtle, have surprisingly powerful effects on our behavior.

Milgram's research; like Freud's, did lead to profound revisions in some of the fundamental assumptions about human nature. Indeed, by the fall of 1963, the results of Milgram's research were making headlines. He found that an average, presumably normal group of New Haven, Connecticut, residents would readily inflict very painful and perhaps even harmful electric shocks on innocent victims.

The subjects believed they were part of an experiment supposedly dealing with the relationship between punishment and learning. An experimenter—who used no coercive powers beyond a stern aura of mechanical and vacant-eyed efficiency—instructed participants to shock a learner by pressing a lever on a machine each time the learner made a mistake on a word-matching task. Each subsequent error led to an increase in the intensity of the shock in 15-volt increments, from 15 to 450 volts.

In actuality, the shock box was a well-crafted prop and the learner an actor who did not actually get shocked. The result: A majority of the subjects continued to obey to the end—believing they were delivering 450 volt shocks—simply because the experimenter commanded them to. Although subjects were told about the deception afterward, the experience was a very real and powerful one for them during the laboratory hour itself.

That year, the headline of an article in the October 26 issue of The New York Times blared, "Sixty-five Percent in Test Blindly Obey Order to Inflict Pain." A week later the St. Louis Post-Dispatch also informed its readers about the experiments—in an editorial lambasting Milgram and Yale for the ordeal they put their subjects through. That article marked the beginning of an enduring ethical controversy stirred up by the experiments that sometimes overshadowed the substance of the findings.

Those groundbreaking and controversial experiments have had—and continue to have—long-lasting significance. They demonstrated with jarring clarity that ordinary individuals could be induced to act destructively even in the absence of physical coercion, and humans need not be innately evil or aberrant to act in ways that are reprehensible and inhumane. While we would like to believe that when confronted with a moral dilemma we will act as our conscience dictates, Milgram's obedience experiments teach us that in a concrete situation with powerful social constraints, our moral sense can easily be trampled.

Humbled Beginnings

Stanley Milgram was born in New York City on August 15, 1933, the second of three children. His parents had emigrated from Europe; his father was an expert cake baker, and his mother worked in the bakery.

Milgram's best friend and classmate was Bernard Fried, who went on to become a world-famous parasitologist. Fried recalls that Milgram "was exceptional in all subjects. One could not have predicted early on what he would do, because he was just as good in the arts as in the sciences." At James Monroe High School in New York City, Milgram was a member of Arista, the honor society, and became editor of the Science Observer, a school newspaper. He also worked on stagecraft for the school's theatrical productions—an experience he would later draw on to infuse his obedience experiments with the dramatic elements that made them such gripping, realistic experiences for his subjects.

After majoring in political science at Queens College in New York City, Milgram applied to the Ph.D. program at Harvard's department of social relations. He was rejected because he had not taken a single psychology course at Queens. Milgram was, however, encouraged to reapply—and was accepted—as a special student for the fall of 1954. To make up for his deficiencies in psychology coursework, he took six undergraduate courses during the summer at three New York-area colleges. He did so well his first year at Harvard that the following year his status was changed to that of a regular student.

The person at Harvard with whom Milgram had been corresponding regarding admission was Gordon Allport, the head of the social relations department's graduate programs. One of the most eminent psychologists of the 20th century, Allport was to become the most important person in Milgram's academic life. Their initial exchange of letters set the tone for their relationship as student and mentor.