Behind the Shock Machine (25 page)

Subject 2435’s son threatened to wreck the lab if the experiment was not stopped. The father, after he had just given his son a 165-volt shock, warned Williams that his son was likely to “tear the place up” unless they stopped.

Father: . . . you better let him out because he’ll do it! If you think any of your equipment . . . we’ll give you back your checks—you can have your money back, I’m not that hard up, and let it go at that. To hell with it! Because I’m not gonna have him get hurt, and he’ll rip your equipment up . . .

Williams of course insisted that the father continue, but the man burst into a tirade.

Father:
[shouting]
I don’t give a God dang what “the experiment requires.” If someone’s getting hurt and hollering, there is no such thing as anyone gonna make continue with
[sic]
. . . . So don’t give me that line of hooley. I’m not so dumb that I don’t know that. And, as I say, you can have your two damn checks back! If he’s gonna holler like that I’m not gonna keep going through with it!

Williams: You have no other choice, teacher.

Father: What do you mean I have no other choice?

Williams: If you don’t continue, we’re going to have to discontinue the entire experiment.

Father:
[quietening down]
Discontinue the entire thing! I ain’t gonna have my boy—would you have your boy hollering in there like that?

Williams: Well, we’ll have to discontinue. May I ask you a few questions?

Father: I’m not going to sit there—after all, that’s my boy, and I’m not gonna sit—
⁴

The father, a married fifty-four-year-old assembler at Dictaphone who had two other children, told Williams in the dehoax that his brother-in-law had recommended that he volunteer for the experiment. Presumably, the brother-in-law had already been a subject but had not told this man what he would be expected to do. Later, after Williams had dehoaxed and calmed the father, Milgram came into the room and introduced himself: “I thought you were going to throw the experimenter out the window!”

After the experiment, Milgram asked the boy to write about why he thought his father had behaved the way he did. The boy clearly saw him as a hero:

I would say that my Dad stopped where he did due to the fact that he honestly believed I was suffering pain. Not only because I was his son, I think that he would have stopped there with anyone else. There comes a time when one individual must think twice before carrying on and I feel my Dad is [
sic
] proven throughout time that there is the time when you must really think of what you are doing and to whom it will affect and what the outcome would be.
⁵

I was struck by the generosity of this “victim,” his unwavering belief in his father’s goodness despite the fact that his dad had given him what he thought were painful electric shocks. It seemed that the experience brought them closer together. But what was the impact of the son’s duplicity on the father?

After the experiment was over, while Williams was explaining its real purpose to the teacher, Milgram had each learner write down an explanation of his companion’s behavior when it came to continuing or refusing to give the shocks. All but one showed in their comments an unwavering belief in their partner’s goodness, even when that partner had gone to the maximum voltage. Subject 2421, a thirty-nine-year-old liquor store manager, stopped at the eleventh switch, or 165 volts, after his friend stopped answering. The “victim” wrote afterward:

My friend is a person who will go out of his way to help you. He is very kind and generous in whatever he does. He stopped the experiment because he thought he was hurting me and he would never deliberately hurt anyone. He would rather be hurt himself. He is a good and honest worker and well liked by everyone who knows him. He is generous to the extent that he will almost give you his last dollar if he thinks you need help.
⁶

Subject 2431, a thirty-three-year-old chemist at a local factory, stopped at the thirteenth shock, or 195 volts. His friend wrote:

I know Bill quite well, having worked with him in the past for several years. Our relationship now is
friendship
—we have work in common and I see him at meetings etc. We also play golf and cards every so often but not too often. I think he stopped because he sincerely would not want to cause any pain to me, nor to anybody else for that matter. Knowing that or feeling that this experiment would have scientific or psychological benefits was probably the only reason that he continued after the first sounds of pain or especially after I first told him to stop.
⁷

Condition 24 was also marked by the pressure that Milgram placed on subjects to recruit others. I wasn’t surprised to find that he had asked subjects for contacts. It wasn’t uncommon; Asch had done the same. But it shocked me how much pressure he put on them. By this stage, Milgram was desperate in his drive to find subjects. When Subject 2432, a forty-year-old fireman, told Milgram how bad he felt for his friend, Milgram was more interested in the man’s recruitment potential.

Subject 2432: He didn’t want to come down. I talked him into this . . . I’ll never live this down.

Milgram: We’re desperately short of subjects. Is there anyone you know?

Subject 2432 tried to fob him off, but Milgram persisted, asking the man to give him the phone numbers of people he thought would volunteer.

Milgram: We need to finish the experiments by Wednesday. We need nine by Wednesday. . . . Just give me a name or two . . .

He ignored the man’s obvious distress and told him what to say if any of his friends phoned to check what it was about: “If they call you, don’t say anything. Say it was a legitimate scientific enterprise.”
⁸

Milgram sounded almost excited when the first subject in condition 24 went to the maximum voltage. Subject 2429—I’ll call him Thomas—was a thirty-two-year-old electrical-motor repairman. He had been a scientist in Hungary and then an officer and pilot in the air force for five years, from 1950 to 1955, and had witnessed the 1956 revolution. He and the Hungarian friend he came to the lab with had
known each other for about two years and regularly went fishing and camping together. Thomas’s English wasn’t great and sometimes he struggled to find the words he wanted. Speaking to Williams afterward, he explained, “Well, this is a test, you know, and I know how the test goes. This is not the first time I go to a test and, you know, and the gentleman at the table said, ‘Go ahead, next question,’ and I go ahead and do the next question because I know myself this not kill nobody.”

But it was as if neither Williams nor Milgram listened to what the man said. The fact that he had pushed the final switch was the focus of their attention. Williams asked him how nervous or tense he had felt during the experiment.

Thomas: Well, ah, I can’t say because I never feel anything in my life, you know, I was an airplane pilot in my old country and sometimes when I’m nervous, you know, I feel a little, but . . . you know, like when I got electric shock, but only for four or five—

Williams: You feel exhilarated.

Thomas: Yeah, the first time, when I get nervous, you know, when I heard bad news or something . . .

It seemed as if Williams was feeding him lines, and they were talking at cross-purposes. When Milgram entered the room, he asked Thomas if he thought the shocks were real and, despite Thomas answering no, went on, asking the man if he’d fought in World War II.

Thomas: No, no, I was only fifteen.

Milgram: Did you fight when you were fifteen?

Thomas: No.

When the experiment was over, he told Milgram, “I help you people?” to which Milgram replied, “You’ve helped us a lot.”

The man I heard on the tape and the man Milgram seemed to think he was were two different people. It didn’t seem to matter what Thomas had to say; Milgram had already made up his mind about the sort of man who would go to the maximum voltage with his friend. As soon as Thomas left the room, Milgram leaned into the microphone and said conspiratorially: “That was Subject 2429. A Hungarian, he’s the first man who went to the end, and his friend was Hungarian, reminding me of the old adage, ‘If you have a Hungarian for a friend you don’t need an enemy.’” Milgram’s father was Hungarian. “He was absolutely serious and convinced in the situation, and his discussion at the end about having to follow orders was a very appropriate one. He’s the first man who shocked his friend. They were rather swarthy looking group of characters but it was genuine, it was serious—‘You have to take orders,’ the man said. He’d seen a lot of dead men in the streets; he’s learned how to take orders, that’s the important thing. That was 2429. 2430 will be coming up.”

There was a sense of urgency and importance in Milgram’s voice as he made these observations and a sense of excitement, too. And yet his conclusions about the man were at odds with what Thomas said in the discussion after the experiment.

In an unpublished fragment possibly written as an early draft for his book, Milgram’s portrait of Thomas was almost a caricature. He appeared as a ruthless, cold-blooded killer:

The third obedient subject had been a pilot in the Hungarian airforce. He told us that in the airforce he had learned the value of military discipline. He said that sentiment had no part in the execution of orders. If he had been told to bomb a town in Hungary, and he knew his family resided in that town, he would nonetheless carry out orders. Discipline in his view, was the highest virtue.
⁹

But I had transcribed the tape, which recorded the experiment from the time when the men arrived in the lab until Williams showed them out, and I heard no such discussion in which Thomas said he would kill his family if told to do so.

I found a similar pattern with the next obedient subject. Milgram
seemed determined to make a particular point about the men in condition 24. Subject 2430 was the second of three who went to the maximum voltage. But while he was an obedient subject according to the results, his behavior during the experiment was far from it. I’ll call him Carl, a twenty-six-year-old technical writer who, Williams noted afterward in the subject file, was “extremely furious” during the experiment.

Carl’s voice shook after his friend—let’s call him Walt—began to shout. Walt eventually refused to answer and called out to Carl to quit, to let him out of there.

Williams: If he doesn’t answer, give him the punishment anyway.

Carl continued.

This time, Walt’s cries of pain were intensified by sound effects: Milgram made Walt’s chair jump and then hit the floor and added his own groans to Walt’s cries.

Carl pushed his chair back and said angrily to Williams, “That’s it for me, I’m not doing this again. I don’t know which one of you guys is doing the answers, but it’s not him. You’re gonna have to cancel the thing out—I’m not giving him more shocks.”

Williams told him that he must continue. Carl argued, but Williams reiterated that he must go on. Carl was silent for ten, fifteen, twenty seconds. On Main Street, a car honked.

Williams: It is absolutely essential that you continue.

Carl:
[angrily]
It was his idea we come here.
[Shouts into the microphone]
We’re going again! Nice:
[emphasizes the first word by saying it loudly, and the other three softly]
day, sky, job, chair.

Williams: Please read the words in an even tone.

Walt: [
screams
] Come on, let’s quit! I refuse to answer any more!

Williams: Continue, please.

Carl: Not me.

Walt: Let’s go!

Williams: The experiment requires that you go on.

Carl:
[voice shaking]
The experiment is not gonna require me to go on. You take the money back.

Williams: The money is not the issue. It’s essential
[raises his voice over Walt, who is still shouting]
that the experiment continues.

Carl: Let me switch places with him.

Williams: We can’t do that, not once we’ve started. The procedure must be followed through.

Walt: Let me out of here!

Williams: You have no other choice, teacher. Please continue.
[Silence from Carl]
The next word is “rich.”

Walt: Carl!

Papers rustled; Carl was obviously fiddling with them. The silence continued. I held my breath.

When Carl’s voice boomed through the microphone again, I groaned.

Carl:
[emphasizes the right answer again]
Rich:
boy
, cake, man, girl.

Walt: Let me out of here!

When Walt got the answer wrong and Carl administered a shock, Williams reprimanded him for barely pressing the switch.

Williams: That didn’t make contact. Press the switch down completely.

Carl:
[referring to Walt’s silence]
He’s not connected up anymore. Why don’t you just take the money back and cancel the thing out?

Williams: Continue please, teacher.

When it was over and Carl had reached 450 volts, he was seething. Williams told him that he wanted to ask some questions and gave him a piece of paper on which to record his answers. Carl snarled, “It’s what I figured, some fucking idiot tests!” Williams, sounding shocked, said, “Pardon me?” before quickly recovering his composure. “If you indicate here . . .”