Climate Catastrophe and Stanley Milgram’s Electric Shock “Obedience” Experiments: An Uncanny Analogy

Russell, Nestar; Bolton, Annette

doi:10.3390/socsci8060178

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Finally, in conflict with some contemporary scholars, we believe it would be unwise to throw out Milgram's obedience study baby with the bathwater of methodological imperfection. There remains much to learn from Milgram's research, and because his obedience studies remain, for the most part, internally valid, current attempts to externalise aspects of his findings to real-life settings-like the Holocaust and even climate catastrophe-remain eminently plausible (see, for example, Russell, 2018aRussell, , 2018bRussell & Bolton, 2019, the latter two of which are Open Access publications).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are Milgram’s Obedience Studies Internally Valid? Critique and Counter-Critique

Russell¹,

Gregory²

2021

JSS

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This article challenges the most significant methodological criticism directed at Milgram's obedience studies, namely, that they lack internal validity because most obedient subjects probably did not believe that the "learner" was actually receiving dangerous electric shocks (Orne & Holland, 1968). This criticism has been bolstered recently by data that claims to show that this was indeed the case (Perry et al., 2020;Hollander & Turowetz, 2017). We argue instead that while Milgram's experimental paradigm has minor methodological flaws, the resilient issue of believability is actually a red herring, because Milgram's procedure ensured subjects remained uncertain about the reality of the shocks they were ostensibly delivering. This uncertainty forced all subjects into resolving the experiment's inherent moral dilemma. That is, would they prematurely end a potentially real experiment and secure the learner's safety? Or would they continue to inflict "shocks" they believed were perhaps, probably, or even most certainly fake, thus still running the risk of potentially being wrong? We believe the obedience experiments remain, for the most part, internally valid, and that they continue to be externalisable to other moral dilemmas. They help in understanding the perpetration of the Holocaust, contrary to the opposite claim made by some of Milgram's critics.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%