Behind the Shock Machine (44 page)

David Baker, director of the Akron archives, enthused about the countless untold stories in the archives as we made our way through its labyrinth of rooms. We passed a shelf housing Skinner’s glass-sided box, in which he had studied animal behavior; the uniforms of the guards in Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment; and seven thousand reels of film spanning the entire twentieth century in psychology. But I gave all this just a quick glance. I had come here to see one thing. Finally, we reached the reading room, and David pushed open the door and stepped to one side to reveal Milgram’s machine.

My first impression was how big it was, and how real it looked. It was 3 feet long, 15.5 inches high, and 16 inches deep. There was an array of switches, labels, and other buttons and dials—a main power switch, an attenuator, a voltage energizer, a voltage meter—to add to its authenticity. Even switched off and inside a glass case, it was a sinister-looking piece of equipment.

Milgram was inordinately proud of his creation, and intensely proprietary about it. He described it as “more than a stage prop” because “no subject in the experiment, including a score of electrical engineers, ever suspected that the device was a simulated generator.”
⁴
In
Obedience
, the camera lingers over it in close-up, and it is depicted in photographs and drawings in
Obedience to Authority
. If he could have patented the design, he would have.
⁵
For Milgram, it was an instrument of measurement, classifying people as defiant or obedient, leaders or followers. It had the potential to turn men and women into monsters.

But the shock machine was also what connected the experimenter and the subject, the subject and the victim. It was a symbol, a metaphor. It was proof of scientific credentials, a buffer, a prop.

For many of the subjects, it was an instrument of torture.

I thought of the hundreds of trembling hands that had pushed those levers and of the stuttering voices, the sweating palms, the uncanny laughter. These were the symptoms of distress and agitation
that Milgram and others had observed from behind the mirror as they watched each person who sat in front of the long line of switches.

I was disappointed that it was behind glass. I had hoped to touch it—to push the levers, hear its low buzz, watch the lights flash and the needles swing as the machine came to life. Instead, I moved around taking photos, trying to get one where my image was not reflected. After a while David left, and I moved closer and put my hands flat against the glass. I’m not sure what I expected. Perhaps I was hoping that it would hum, that I would feel the power of the machine through my fingers, as in a 1950s science-fiction film.

After I had finished, I sat at one of the tables in the reading room, looking through Solomon Asch’s papers. Among them was a letter from Milgram, dated September 1974. Milgram wrote that he hadn’t heard from Asch since December 1973, when he had sent him an advance copy of his book and asked if he would appear in Milgram’s next documentary.
⁶
I sat there thinking about what Asch’s silence must have meant and how in later years Asch refused to be associated with the research. I realized with a start that I was staring into space at a dusty mass of faded wires—the back of the shock machine. In contrast to the front, which looked so solid and real, the back was simply an empty box, filled with a jumble of wires. It was like the experiment itself: the closer I looked at the inner workings of the experiment, the more contrived and unconvincing the results seemed.

Even the experts have moments of doubt about what the research really meant. Ian Parker wrote that it was disconcerting to hear the then-leading expert on Milgram, Arthur Miller, wonder “if the experiments meant anything at all.”
⁷
Milgram himself had expressed similar doubts soon after the experiments were over: “Sometimes the research does not seem to have advanced my understanding in any important way. And perhaps the way we went about it was the fault.”
⁸
He wrote of a fictional thirteenth-century man called Sylvanus, who wanted to “build a system of knowledge about flames” and decided to study the height of a candle’s flame under various conditions, “just as we chose those conditions we thought we alter [
sic
] the level of obedience.” Sylvanus measured the flame at sea level, then halfway up a
mountain, then at the mountain’s peak. He measured it when there was wind, then when there was none, then with different wicks and at different temperatures, recording it all in his book. Finally, he wrote a treatise, “The Height of a Candle’s Flame as It Is Altered by Various Conditions”:

And while he knew he had contributed little, he had the feeling that there was at least something there, something he did not know before. He took his treatise to the wisest man in the realm and asked for his judgement. The wisest man read it carefully, and noted the diligence with which Sylvanus had collected his information, and the exactness with which he worked—more exact perhaps, than any other person in his time. But he said to Sylvanus: “I have read your treatise with interest, and I find your efforts admirable. However, there is a very important question that you did not answer: What is the nature of burning?”

Sylvanus then said: “I am sure that is an important question, but the height of the flame is all I could measure, so that is all I could know.”

Then the wise man adjoined: “Pehraps [
sic
] Sylvanus, if you had climbed fewer mountains, and explored more ideas, you would have found the right method; for in choosing the easy method, you have lost the question.”
⁹

In Milgram’s parable, he is of course the hapless and myopic Sylvanus. It suggests that, even before his findings were published, he sensed that his preoccupation with technique had blinded him to bigger issues of meaning. As François noted, “He was an experimenter looking for results—findings—and it became like an enterprise, a machine, and findings were the products.”

The obedience experiments might not be good science, but they are a powerful metaphor, an artistic if not scientific triumph. Through them, Milgram created a dramatic and sinister performance perhaps worthy of Hitchcock with his subjects as actors, Williams in the lead and McDonough offstage in a supporting role.
¹⁰
He was a scientist and an artist yearning to take his place among the intellectuals of his
time, to contribute something profound to our understanding of such an overwhelming and impenetrable event.

I left Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library on the last day of my trip just on closing. Outside, the trees cast deep, inviting shade over the benches in the quadrangle, and I took a seat beneath one. I looked across to Linsly-Chittenden Hall. It was hard to imagine that I’d been surprised that there was no plaque to commemorate Milgram’s work. Or to remember a time when I had had so few doubts about the most famous psychological research of the twentieth century.

On the other side of the quadrangle wall, I could hear the faint buzz of New Haven traffic. The leaves of the trees moved, stirred by a faint breeze that soon died again. A cyclist did a lazy figure eight and disappeared through an archway. In that stillness, I tried to recall what I had thought I would find when I first arrived here. I had come in search of those who had taken part in the obedience experiments, and I had found some. Every person had a different story, a particular take on the event and its aftermath.

In the course of my research I had wondered sometimes if it was just that I was easily influenced: swayed by the next person I met, the next opinion I heard, the next article I read. I didn’t know if that was true. But I had become certain that, in the journey across the United States, Canada, and Australia, I had traded my admiration of Milgram for a better view of people.

In telling this story, I’ve probably been just as guilty of shaping, selecting, highlighting, and discounting things that don’t fit the narrative I’m trying to tell. Some might say I’ve worn my own set of blinkers. Psychologists even have a phrase for it: “confirmation bias,” which describes the habit of paying attention to those things that confirm our worldview.

Suddenly, the courtyard seemed stifling. I got up quickly and crossed the grass, toward the fresh air, movement—the ebb and flow of life on the footpath. When I had arrived here, I had expected to tell a particular sort of story: a kind of retelling of Milgram’s version with a contemporary twist. I hadn’t expected that I’d end up with the story you’ve read and that my view of the profession I’d trained in would be shaken. Just like many of Milgram’s subjects, I emerged from the
grassy quadrangle and onto the street sensing that a spell had been broken. I blinked in the sudden light and noise. Cars tooted, a bus roared past, and a group of teenagers hooted with laughter on the edge of New Haven Green. People flowed past on their way home from work, and I joined them.

APPENDIX:

LIST OF CONDITIONS

The conditions were conducted in chronological order between August 1961 and May 1962, except for condition 22, which was conducted at various periods during 1961 and 1962.

1. No feedback

This variation tests how an almost silent learner may affect obedience. The learner, in the adjoining room, does not cry out. Nothing is heard from him until the twentieth shock (300 volts), when he pounds on the wall. He pounds again at 315 volts, and then is silent.

Number of subjects: 40

Number who went to 450 volts: 65 percent

2. Voice feedback

Perhaps the best-known variation, this tests the effect of a vocal learner as the teacher hears his cries and shouts from the adjoining room. The first sound from the learner is a grunt at the fifth shock (75 volts). At the tenth shock (150 volts), he demands to be let out. His protests and cries increase in intensity with each subsequent shock.

Number of subjects: 40

Number who went to 450 volts: 62 percent

3. Proximity

Follows the same script as above, except that the learner is in the same room as the teacher, seated 50 centimeters behind him.

Number of subjects: 40

Number who went to 450 volts: 40 percent

4. Touch

To test the effect of physical contact, the learner and the teacher are in the same room. In order to receive the shock, the learner must put his hand on a metal plate. At the tenth shock (150 volts), he refuses. The experimenter instructs the teacher to continue the shocks and hold the learner’s hand to the plate each time.

Number of subjects: 40

Number who went to 450 volts: 30 percent

5. Coronary trouble

In this variation, the learner mentions heart trouble at the beginning of the experiment and, seated in the adjoining room, protests about his heart during the process. The script is the same as in condition 2.

Number of subjects: 40

Number who went to 450 volts: 65 percent

6. Different actors

This variation is the same as condition 5, except that different actors are used for roles of the learner and the experimenter. Emil Elgiss plays the experimenter and Bob Tracy plays the learner.

Number of subjects: 40

Number who went to 450 volts: 50 percent

7. Group pressure to disobey

Three teachers are chosen, two of whom are actors. Teacher one reads the word-pair questions, teacher two (the subject) reads the voltage and administers punishment, and teacher three reads the correct answer after punishment. After the eleventh shock (165 volts), the first teacher refuses to continue. The experimenter fails to convince him to go on but instructs the other two to continue. At the fourteenth shock (210 volts), the third teacher also refuses, leaving the subject to conduct the experiment while the others look on.

Number of subjects: 40

Number who went to 450 volts: 10 percent

8. The learner’s proviso

To test the effect of the learner’s preferences, the learner states at the outset that he will only agree to participate if he can leave when he wants. When he demands to be let out at the tenth shock (150 volts), the experimenter tells the teacher to continue regardless of the learner’s wishes.

Number of subjects: 40

Number who went to 450 volts: 40 percent

9. Group pressure to obey

This variation is the same as condition 7 in the division of tasks between three teachers, except that two teachers (both actors) obey the experimenter’s instructions and mutter their disapproval if the third teacher, the unwitting subject, hesitates or refuses to continue.

Number of subjects: 40

Number who went to 450 volts: 72 percent

10. Conflicting instructions
*

The learner receives one message from a benign experimenter and another from an enthusiastic learner. In Part A, when the experimenter hears the learner’s complaints about his heart at the tenth shock (150 volts), he tells the teacher to stop, but the learner wants to keep going. In Part B, the experimenter leaves the room on a pretense, and the learner implores the teacher to continue.

Number of subjects: 20

Number who went to 450 volts: 100 percent (Part A); 66 percent (Part B). Milgram’s notes read: “Note special meaning of defiant and obedient in this condition. To obey is to stop giving shocks after the exptr. calls halt to expt. Defiant means to give shocks after exptr. stops expt.”