Editing Stanley Milgram (section)

==Obedience to authority==
[[File:Milgram experiment v2.svg|thumb|200px|Setup of the Milgram Experiment]]
{{main|Milgram experiment}}
In 1963, Milgram submitted the results of his obedience experiments in the article "Behavioral Study of Obedience". In the ensuing controversy, the [[American Psychological Association]] held up his application for membership for a year because of questions about the ethics of his work, but eventually did grant him full membership. Ten years later, in 1974, Milgram published ''Obedience to Authority''.  He won the [[AAAS Prize for Behavioral Science Research]] in 1964, mostly for his work on the social aspects of obedience.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://archives.aaas.org/awards.php?a_id=24 |title=AAAS Prize for Behavioral Science Research |website=Archives.aaas.org |access-date=May 5, 2016}}</ref> Inspired in part by the 1961 trial of [[Adolf Eichmann]], his models were later also used to explain the 1968 [[My Lai massacre]] (including authority training in the military, depersonalizing the "enemy" through racial and cultural differences, etc.).  He produced a film depicting his experiments, which are considered classics of social psychology.

An article in ''American Psychologist''<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|title = A cognitive reinterpretation of Stanley Milgram's observations on obedience to authority|last = Nissani|first = Moti|date = 1990|journal = American Psychologist|doi = 10.1037/0003-066x.45.12.1384|volume=45|issue = 12|pages=1384–1385}}</ref> sums up Milgram's obedience experiments: {{blockquote|In Milgram's basic paradigm, a subject walks into a laboratory believing that they are about to take part in a study of memory and learning.  After being assigned the role of a teacher, the subject is asked to teach word associations to a fellow subject (who in reality is a collaborator of the experimenter). The teaching method, however, is unconventional—administering increasingly higher electric shocks to the learner. Once the presumed shock level reaches a certain point, the subject is thrown into a conflict. On the one hand, the strapped learner demands to be set free, he appears to suffer pain, and going all the way may pose a risk to his health. On the other hand, the experimenter, if asked, insists that the experiment is not as unhealthy as it appears to be, and that the teacher must go on. In sharp contrast to the expectations of professionals and laymen alike, some 65% of all subjects continue to administer shocks up to the very highest levels.}}More recent tests of the experiment have found that it only works under certain conditions; in particular, when participants believe the results are necessary for the "good of science".<ref>{{cite web|title=The Bad Show|url=http://www.radiolab.org/2012/jan/09/whos-bad/|publisher=WNYC|access-date=April 19, 2012}}</ref>

According to Milgram, "the essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person's wishes, and he therefore no longer sees himself as responsible for his actions.  Once this critical shift of viewpoint has occurred in the person, all of the essential features of obedience follow."  Thus, "the major problem for the subject is to recapture control of his own regnant processes once he has committed them to the purposes of the experimenter."<ref>{{Cite book|title = Obedience to Authority|last = Milgram|first = Stanley|publisher = Harper & Row|year = 1974|location = New York|pages = xii, xiii}}</ref> Besides this hypothetical agentic state, Milgram proposed the existence of other factors accounting for the subject's obedience: politeness, awkwardness of withdrawal, absorption in the technical aspects of the task, the tendency to attribute impersonal quality to forces that are essentially human, a belief that the experiment served a desirable end, the sequential nature of the action, and anxiety.

A competing explanation<ref name=":0" /> of Milgram's results invokes [[belief perseverance]] as the underlying factor.   What "people cannot be counted on is to realize that a seemingly benevolent authority is in fact malevolent, even when they are faced with overwhelming evidence which suggests that this authority is indeed malevolent. Hence, the underlying cause for the subjects' striking conduct could well be conceptual, and not the alleged 'capacity of man to abandon his humanity . . . as he merges his unique personality into larger institutional structures.'"

Inspired by the horrific events of Nazi Germany, Milgram's obedience experiments have been used to explain a range of social influences on the individual—including how police interrogators can get innocent people to confess to crimes they did not commit.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Kassin | first1 = S | year = 2015 | title = The social psychology of false confessions | journal = Social Issues and Policy Review | volume = 9 | pages = 24–49 | doi = 10.1111/sipr.12009 }}</ref> At the same time, these experiments have come under attack. Some critics questioned whether subjects sensed the unreality of the situation. Others questioned the relevance of the laboratory setting to the real world.

The most devastating criticisms involved the ethics of the basic experimental design. Professor Milgram, for his part, felt that such misgivings were traceable to the unsavory nature of his results: "Underlying the criticism of the experiment," Milgram wrote, "is an alternative model of human nature, one holding that when confronted with a choice between hurting others and complying with authority, normal people reject authority."<ref>{{Cite book|title = Obedience to Authority|last = Milgram|first = Stanley|publisher = Harper & Row|year = 1974|location = New York|page = 169}}</ref>

Daniel Raver looks back:{{blockquote|Even though Milgram's personal interests were diverse, his greatest contribution to psychology came through one set of experiments, but in that set he contributed monumentally.  He helped justify a science some dismiss as unimportant, contributed to the understanding of humanity, and, even if by way of attacks against him, contributed to the consideration of the treatment of research participants.}}