Milgram Experiment Archives - World of Psychology

October marks the 50th anniversary of Yale University psychology researcher Stanley Milgram’s first published paper on his infamous shock machine experiments. (Ah, the 1960s in psychology research — when ethics were just something left to philosophers, not psychologists or doctors.)

You probably remember the experiment from your Introduction to Psychology class. Milgram designed a set of experiments where the subject sat next to an electrical “shock machine” that wasn’t hooked up to the subject, but rather to another person hidden from view. It had a set of switches that would give greater and greater voltage shocks to the other person when pressed.

The subject was designated as “the teacher” and the other person was “the learner.” When the learner didn’t learn, the teacher had to administer a shock. A man in a lab coat — “the experimenter” — directed the subject when to administer shocks of increasing intensity when the learner answered a question incorrectly.

What Milgram claimed to have found was that people are easily subjugated and will readily follow instructions to “do evil” to another human. But a more nuanced review of Milgram’s experiments show something quite different.

Ordinary Heroes and the Science of Good and Evil “I did what anyone could do, no big deal to jump on the tracks.”
— Wesley Autrey, New York City’s “subway Superman”

On January 2nd, 2007, 50-year-old construction worker Wesley Autrey was waiting with his two young daughters for the train at the 137th Street and Broadway station in the Harlem section of Manhattan. Also waiting was 19-year-old film student Cameron Hollopeter, who began having a seizure.

Autrey borrowed a pen and used it to keep Hollopeter’s jaw open. Understandably wobbly post-seizure, Hollopeter fell onto the tracks. Autrey saw the lights of the oncoming train, gave a stranger his daughters to hold, and jumped down. He protected Hollopeter by lying on top of him. The height of their bodies on top of each other is 20-1/2 inches; the train’s clearance, 21. The engineer applied the brakes, yet all but two cars passed over them. Mr. Autrey had grease on his cap.

I propose we build a hero museum with Wesley Autrey’s cap as the first exhibit.

Mr. Autrey has been honored internationally, was highlighted for his heroism at the State of the Union address in 2007, and even appeared on The Tonight Show with David Letterman. We love our heroes. But what makes them do what they do?

Milgram Experiment

Psychology Secrets: People Aren’t as Evil as the Milgram Obedience Experiment Suggested

Ordinary Heroes and the Science of Good and Evil