Psychologist Stanley Milgram (1933–1984) was deeply affected by Nazi atrocities, so when his early 1960s research on Americans revealed an unexpectedly high rate of obedience to authority commanding subjects to commit cruel actions, this very much troubled him. Milgram’s studies revealed other truths—not as widely known—that are crucial to fighting authoritarianism.
One ignored finding is that many of Milgram’s subjects did express dissent but ultimately obeyed. Milgram very much wanted us to recognize that in authoritarian settings, dissent alone without disobedience is of no value in stopping abuse, as dissent is routinely ignored by authoritarians.
In the original Milgram study at Yale University, subjects were recruited for an experiment ostensibly investigating learning. The naïve subjects were the “teachers” and a confederate was the “learner,” and there was also an experimenter authority who ordered subject teachers to shock the learner for incorrect responses. In the most well-known variation of the experiment, 26 of 40 teacher subjects (65%) continued to shock the confederate learner to the highest level of 450 volts (which was labeled as “Danger: severe shock”) even as the confederate learner pounded the walls to protest and no longer answered after 315 volts. While 65% of subjects neverdisobeyed authority, even the other 35% (who ultimately disobeyed) did shock subjects at lower levels.
Vital but often ignored is that audio recordings…