After the obedience experiments, Milgram continued to pioneer inventive research. For example, at Harvard, he devised a method for studying the "small world" effect. Individuals in one U.S. city were given the job of sending a packet to a particular stranger in a different part of the country via the acquaintances they knew on a first-name basis. Surprisingly, it took only some six intermediaries to reach the target stranger. Milgram published the first article about these findings in the premier issue of Psychology Today in May 1967. Milgram also conducted a study of the effects of TV on antisocial behavior and helped launch the psychological study of urban life with the publication of his article, "The Experience of Living in Cities," in Science magazine.
Universal Fame
Despite the variety of research Milgram produced, his obedience studies continue to overshadow his other work. Milgram's book Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View has been translated into 11 languages. The wide interest in his experiments has transcended the usual disciplinary boundaries. In fact, the influence of this research goes beyond academia, permeating contemporary culture and thought. There is a French-German punk-rock group named Milgram. In 1986, musician Peter Gabriel, an admirer of Milgram, recorded a song titled, "We Do What We're Told."
Milgram's experiments have also captured the dramatic imagination. In 1973, British playwright Dannie Abse produced a play, The Dogs of Pavlov, inspired by the research. Since then, at least a half-dozen plays have been written or are currently in progress, based on the obedience studies. And in 1976, CBS aired a film, The Tenth Level, starring William Shatner as a Milgram-like character.
Milgram's warning—that when an individual "merges...into an organizational structure, a new creature replaces autonomous man, unhindered by the limitations of individual morality, freed of human inhibition, mindful only of the sanctions of authority"—has much resonance. Professionals in fields as varied as nursing, marketing, accounting and management have inferred practical lessons from Milgram's obedience studies.
Legal scholarship has also drawn heavily on the obedience studies and their implications. For example, Steven Hartwell, a law professor at the University of San Diego, conducted an educational exercise for his students in which they were to individually advise litigants in a small-claims court. He told his students that he would be available in an adjacent office if they needed to consult with him. Hartwell writes:
The "clients" were, in fact, a single confederate who sought the same advice from each student: how she should present her side of a rent dispute. I told each student to advise the client to lie under oath that she had paid the rent. When students asked for clarification, I uniformly responded, "...My advice is that, if your client wants to win her case, then you must tell her to perjure herself."… We wanted them to experience the pull between loyalty to authority… and prescribed ethical conduct … Although many of the 24 participating students grumbled either to me or to the client about my proffered advice, 23 told their client to perjure herself.
We didn't need Milgram to tell us we have a tendency to obey orders. What we didn't know before Milgram's experiments is just how powerful this tendency is. And having been enlightened about our extreme readiness to obey authorities, we can try to take steps to guard ourselves against unwelcome or reprehensible commands.
Yes, Sir
One important place where the lessons of Milgram's work have been taken seriously and acted upon is in the U.S. Army. Milgram's research and its implications are discussed in two mandatory psychology courses at the U.S. Military Academy. In 1985, the head of the academy's department of behavioral sciences and leadership wrote, "One of the desired outcomes of this is that our future military leaders will be fully cognizant not only of their authority but also of their responsibility to make decisions that are well considered and morally sound."
What accounts for the far-flung influence of Milgram's obedience experiments? I believe it has to do with how, in his demonstration of our powerful propensity to obey authority, Milgram has identified one of the universals of social behavior, one that transcends both time and place: conformity. And people intuitively sense this.
I have carried out two data analyses that provide at least some evidence to back up this assertion. In one, I correlated the results of Milgram's standard obedience experiments and the replications conducted by others with their dates of publication. The results: There was absolutely no relationship between when a study was conducted and the amount of obedience it yielded. In a second analysis, I compared the outcomes of obedience experiments conducted in the U.S. with those conducted in other countries. Remarkably, the average obedience rates were very similar: In the U.S. studies, some 61 percent of the subjects were fully obedient, while elsewhere the obedience rate was 66 percent.
It is fitting that, in an article about Milgram, he should have the last word on this matter. In a letter to Alan Elms, a former student at Yale (now on the faculty of the University of California at Davis) dated September 25, 1973, Milgram wrote:
"We do not observe compliance to authority merely because it is a transient cultural or historical phenomenon, but because it flows from the logical necessities of social organization. If we are to have social life in any organized form—that is to say, if we are to have society—then we must have members of society amenable to organizational imperatives."
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