Could you kill? Milgram and Obedience

If you were ever lucky enough to study psychology, then chances are you've heard of Stanley Milgram. Not only did Milgram shed light on an innate darkness the human race wasn't aware it contained, he did it in a post-Holocaust world which was struggling to understand how 12 million people could just vanish from the face of the earth.

The original ad

Just before Milgram was to begin his investigations; Adolf Eichmann was set to stand trial for his role in the Holocaust. Debate was raging about how the German people should attempt to confront their collective past: was every individual to blame for inaction in the face of murder, were only those who committed atrocities guilty, or were they all victims of a few fascists in Berlin? What was it that made ordinary members of society become cold blooded killers? Milgram sought the answers in his study investigating obedience to authority.

“We Will Pay You $4.00 for One Hour of You Time. Persons Needed for a Study of Memory.” read the ad placed in the local paper, June 1961. Because it was Yale, and because it was a modest sum of money; you turn up with newspaper article in hand. You get paid your $4 and then you’re told you will be part of an experiment that investigates the effect of punishment on learning. You’re indifferent at this point. Another person joins you and you’re introduced. You’re told he will be playing the part of the learner and you; the teacher. You’re then led down a darkened corridor into a room and asked to help strap down your new friend. You oblige and then apply the electrodes to his body.

You return to the previous room and see a generator and some buttons. On these buttons are various voltages – 15, 30, 45, up until 450. On the highest ones it reads “Danger, Extreme Shock, xxx,” The experimenter gives you a little 45 volt blast on the arm, just so you know.

The learner

You start to read out some words in order; your new friend who is strapped into the electric chair has to repeat what you said. He starts off pretty well but then he starts making mistakes, so you give him a gentle shock. Again, he keeps making more mistakes so you increase the power and buzz away. The experiment continues and you keep upping the voltage as the man makes more mistakes. From the next room you hear a scream and through the intercom your new friend asks the experiment to be stopped. The man in the white coat turns to you and says: “The experiment requires that you continue.” You continue because the man says so. You continue past your new friend’s screams. You ignore his warnings about a heart problem. You put the voltage up as high as it will go. You electrocute your new friend. You continue until the experimenter is commanding you to shock a lifeless body. You stop only once, as far as you are aware, the man in the next room is dead.

Stanley Milgram

So this is the crux of the Milgram experiments. See if the subject would be obedient enough to ‘kill’ the collaborator because a person in a position of authority told you to. In fact, 65% of people were prepared to shock until the person feigned death or serious injury. So you’re thinking you’re different. You’re not.

What does this mean to advertising folk? It exposes our consumer, it strips them down to reveal the primal nature we thought we had long since abandoned. It reveals our unconscious and how our consumer loves to do as they’re told. Consumers are inherently trusting of authority and they don’t like to be individuals. They are not in control, we are. If we set up the right conditions then it may be possible to manipulate a large percentage of people to as we wish. This is a responsibility that we cannot take lightly.

At the very least this shows us why people in a perceived position of authority make great brand spokespeople. The Sensodyne ads are very effective for this exact reason. For this brand, vibrant creativity is unnecessary. These figures of authority (dentists in lab coats) do all the hard work and their paid-for-opinions are absorbed like rain on the desert floor.

This is one of the key psychological experiments of the 20^th Century, not only for the relevance of its convictions, but for the body of work it inspired. If you want to know more I’ll happily discuss; I wrote my dissertation about the ‘banality of evil’. It was the most fascinating thing I've studied to date.