When discussing Milgram’s notorious experiments, in which participants were instructed to give increasingly dangerous electric shocks to another person, most commentators take a black or white approach.
Participants are categorised as obedient or defiant, and the headline result is taken as the surprising number of people – the majority – who obeyed by going all the way and administering the highest, lethal voltage.
A new study takes a different stance by looking at the different acts of resistance shown by Milgram’s participants, regardless of whether they ultimately completed the experiment. This isn’t the first time researchers have explored defiance in the Milgram paradigm (for example, see this 2011 study, and last year’s reinterpretation of the findings), but it’s the most comprehensive analysis of resistance as revealed through the dialogue in Milgram’s original studies.
Sociology doctoral researcher Matthew Hollander has purchased and transcribed audio recordings of 117 of Milgram’s participants taken from different versions of the seminal 1960s research. He has carefully analysed the three-way conversational interactions between the experimenter, each participant playing the role of “teacher”, and the “learner” (actually an actor) who was subjected to the shocks and cried out in pain and protest. From these interactions, Hollander has identified six different forms of resistance, three implicit and three explicit.
The three implicit forms of resistance were: silences and hesitations (e.g. after the experimenter has instructed the participant to continue with the process); imprecations (often in response to cries from the learner); and laughter. The claim about laughter is controversial because earlier commentators have interpreted laughter by Milgram’s participants as a worrying sign of sadism. Hollander is interested in those specific instances when participant laughter followed commands from the experimenter – this laughter, he believes, was an act of resistance because it was intended to show the participant’s ability to cope with the difficult situation.
The three explicit forms of resistance were: addressing the learner (e.g. asking him if he’s happy to continue); prompting the experimenter (e.g. either querying whether it’s necessary to continue, or telling him that the learner is in pain); and finally “stop tries”, in which the participant stated he or she did not want to continue.
Comparing participants who ultimately obeyed all the way to the highest shock, and those who refused to complete the experiment, there are some revealing similarities and differences in the forms of resistance they used along the way.
Most participants who completed the experiment, and those who refused, used the implicit “wait and see” resistance strategies, which Hollander says were designed to delay the continuation of the experiment, presumably in the hope that the experimenter would halt proceedings. But only the participants who, at some stage, refused to complete the experiment, used the explicit strategy of addressing the learner – effectively granting him the authority to dictate whether the process should continue. These defiant participants also used more “stop tries” – 98 per cent used at least one, compared with just 19 per cent of the participants who ultimately completed the experiment.
Hollander said his conversation-analytic approach promised to “open up new perspectives on an old experiment whose legacy lives on.” What’s more, he believes the same approach could usefully be applied to other settings. By improving our understanding of the interpersonal dynamics of authority and the resistance to authority, such research “could save lives and empower potential victims,” he said.
Hollander, M. (2015). The repertoire of resistance: Non-compliance with directives in Milgram’s ‘obedience’ experiments British Journal of Social Psychology DOI: 10.1111/bjso.12099
More on Stanley Milgram in the Research Digest archive.