My Reaction to "Obedience to Authority", by Stanley Milgram

Why do terrible things happen because of good people?

Chapter 1

The first chapter basically told me everything that I already knew about the obedience to authority experiments before reading the book.  It starts with an added philosophical preamble, and also serves to introduce me to the writing style of Stanley Milgram.  This will be a rough read...

Chapter 2

Chapter two goes into the specifics of how the experiment was carried out, complete with pictures of the recruitment ad and the victim.  I did appreciate knowing what the victim looked like, as it helped me visualize who the subject had to torture.

Chapter 3

Chapter three serves as the hypothesis of the experiment, where Milgram thinks that people are generally good and independent, and will do what you figure you would do in that situation.  Oh, he was wrong...

Chapter 4

This chapter contains the results of the original experiment, where we find that people will inflict pain as long as they are told, almost regardless of their own moral inhibitions.  Like a good scientist, Milgram tries all kinds of variations on how the experiment is carried out.  In this chapter he finds that the closer to the subject that the suffering occurs, the quicker they come to rebel against the experimenter.

Chapter 5

Another chapter that I appreciated, Milgram gives us the verbal reactions of some of his test subjects.  You can sense a palpable unease on the part of the subject, while the experimenter remains a calm neutral voice.

Chapter 6

Now, Milgram et. all decide to try additional variations of the experiment.  This is one of the more interesting chapters, due to the fact that this part of the experiment was new information to me, and the fact that it is the most action-packed part of the book.  Action packed in the sense that it is full of situations and results.

Chapter 7

This is basically another chapter five, except that the subjects are commenting on the experiments from chapter six, not four.

Chapter 8

Really, this is just the chapter where they just throw out whatever situation they could think of.  I think this is the only part of the book where I found any of the situations funny, such as the victim demanding that he be shocked "for science".  Considering the previous chapters, this one had a hint of situational irony. 

Chapter 9

Chapter nine has a more sociological feel in my opinion.  These experiments all involve peers and confederates, and we see that the effects of conformity are in fact stronger than the effects of obedience.

Chapter 10

And now, the fun is over.  There are no more experiments, but instead, Milgram begins his analysis of why the results were the way they were.  His evolutionary explanations make sense to me.

Chapter 11

This chapter is the one that actually convinced me that it is not entirely preposterous that so many people went to the end of the board.  When he brought up the agentic state, I started to think about situations in which I tried to impress authority figures with my ability to perform some task.

Chapter 12

At this point, Milgram explains the discomfort that people feel when they have a conflict between their orders and their values.  I think it is interesting that people undergo such an ordeal when they have a conflict like this.  

Chapter 13

In chapter 13, Milgram entertains the possibility of a Freudian explanation, where everyone is inherently evil, and obedience just serves as a scapegoat to let people be as awful as they want to be.  But I think this is silly, and the experiment where the subjects were allowed to choose their voltage proves that this idea is unfounded.

Chapter 14

Scientific method necessitates a section of the book that acknowledges any flaws with the method of the experiment.  The only major problem that was brought up was that people may not have legitimately believed that they were administering an actual shock to a victim.  It's hard to gauge people's honesty on this, but I think the guy who made it sound silly to believe the experiment proved it's validity, when people admitted to believing the experiment at the risk of seeming foolish.

Chapter 15

Just as in the first chapter, chapter 15 contains a little philosophical discussion on the effects of obedience, featuring an appaling example from the Vietnam war, where an American platoon massacred a village.

Book as a whole

I didn't realize it until I started looking at my chapter descriptions, but this book is structured just like a lab report based on the scientific method.  It contains an introduction, methodology, hypothesis, results, analysis and discussion, possible errors, and a conclusion.  After realizing that, I forgave Milgram for his dense writing style.

The difference between this book and any of the previous books that we've read is that I don't have much to say about this one that I couldn't fit in the chapter descriptions.  This book was completely unlike Gang Leader for a Day, in that the chapters in this book were very small and abundant.  So my book summary may be shorter than gang leader for a day, but there are twice as many chapter descriptions here as the other book, so I feel that my writing quota has been met.

To be honest, this is the kind of book I read because I have to.  Yes, I am actually interested in the results of the study, along with Milgram's explanation for it, but the book as a whole is not what I would call a delightful read.  It is very densely worded, and occasionally I will find that I've made it to the bottom of the page without knowing what I just read.  This may sound bad, but I would have much rather read a summary of the results, probably from Wikipedia if I had been interested in finding out about this on my own.