Obedience to Authority: The Milgram Experiment

Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist at Yale, was intrigued by a question that haunted the post-Holocaust world: how did ordinary people manage to take part in atrocities? His answer was an experiment that would become one of psychology’s most famous and controversial.

The design was apparently simple. The participant (the "teacher") was instructed by a researcher in a white lab coat to administer increasingly strong electric shocks to another "participant" (actually an actor) each time he got a memory question wrong. The shocks ranged from 15 to 450 volts, in 15-volt increments. The labels on the panel ranged from "Mild Shock" to "XXX" (along with "Danger: Severe Shock").

The actor never received real shocks. But his reactions were carefully staged: at 75 volts, he groaned; at 150, he asked to stop; at 300, he banged on the wall and refused to respond; at 330 volts and above, he fell completely silent. Even in the face of that silence, when the researcher said "please continue, the experiment requires you to continue," 65% of participants went up to 450 volts.

Milgram conducted 19 variations of the original experiment to understand the factors that increase or reduce obedience. The results revealed that obedience is not a fixed personality trait, but rather a behavior shaped by situational variables.

The pattern is clear: the closer the victim is (and the farther away the authority is), the lower the obedience. But the perceived legitimacy of the authority is just as powerful. When the experiment was conducted at Yale (vs. an anonymous office), obedience was higher. The white coat, the professional tone, the institutional setting: all of this creates a perception of legitimate authority that suppresses moral resistance.

The most hopeful variation of Milgram’s experiment involved two actors who served as “teachers” alongside the real participant. All three were supposed to administer shocks together. At one point, the first actor refused to continue. Then the second also refused. The real participant was left alone with the researcher.

The result is extraordinary: when two “teachers” refused before the participant did, obedience plummeted from 65% to just 10%. The presence of people who resist completely changes the social calculus. Collective resistance is not merely additive: it transforms the dynamic.

This echoes Asch's variation with the ally: a single dissenter who breaks unanimity frees others to resist. Obedience and conformity share the same vulnerability: they depend on unanimity. Break the unanimity, and the system collapses.

The most effective digital scams do not exploit technical flaws. They exploit the psychology of obedience. The pattern is consistent: an authority figure (a bank, government, Receita Federal, or police) issues an urgent instruction that requires immediate action. The victim obeys before thinking critically, just like Milgram’s participants.

The elements are the same: perceived legitimacy (logos, formal language, domains that look official), urgency (a short deadline, a threat of consequences), and a specific request for action (click, transfer money, provide data). Urgency is especially effective because it activates System 1, preventing System 2 from conducting critical analysis.

The Milgram experiment is more than a chapter in the history of psychology. It precisely describes how organizational hierarchies produce unethical decisions in everyday life. Enron, Volkswagen (Dieselgate), Boeing (737 MAX): in every case, ordinary people carried out instructions they knew were wrong because the order came "from above".

Corporate structures amplify the same mechanisms as Milgram’s experiments. The chain of command diffuses responsibility (each link says, "I was just doing what I was told"). Specialization fragments the view (each person sees only their piece, not the total harm). And in crises, urgency suppresses dissent: "we don’t have time to question this; we need to act."

The Milgram experiment sparked one of the greatest ethical controversies in the history of psychological research. In 1964, Diana Baumrind published a devastating critique: participants experienced extreme stress, some trembled uncontrollably, and they had not given informed consent for the actual experiment (they believed they were administering real shocks). Milgram deceived them, and the debriefing afterward did not necessarily erase the trauma of discovering they were capable of obeying to that extent.

Ironically, Milgram's experiment directly contributed to the creation of research ethics committees (IRBs in the U.S., CEPs in Brazil). Today, a study like Milgram's would never be approved. But the paradox remains: we discovered the depth of human obedience only because the study was conducted in a way we now consider unethical.

While covering Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt coined the term “banality of evil”: the idea that major atrocities don’t require monsters, only obedient bureaucrats. Milgram provided empirical support for this idea. Destructive obedience is not a personality trait. It is a situational response to which we are all vulnerable.