y!
This is entrapment; this is fraud. This experiment tells us nothing except the lengths psychologists will go to to justify disgraceful behaviour and then build a career on it. So why is it so highly regarded, and so often cited as one of the key experiments of the 20th century? Because it fits in with the cliched thinking that we all have a dark side, that we’re all capable of being Eichmanns, that underneath the cultured surface we’re all monsters. We’re all guilty. But as Justman concludes: “we find the Milgram experiment illuminating less for what it reveals about any presumed tendency to dumb obedience than for what it says about the beliefs of a culture where such manipulations could be prized as a contribution to knowledge.”
I would go one stage further though. The experiment as normally understood certainly has no relevance to the Eichmann situation. Eichmann and his like were not conflicted about what they did; they didn’t suffer agonies of conscience. It didn’t occur to them, because they accepted the moral consensus. They believed that Europe should be cleansed of Jews because they accepted the Nazi view that Jews were a contamination that needed to be removed. Eichmann didn’t sit at his desk sweating away, “Oh God, if only someone else had this responsibility! I know it’s wrong, but I can’t disobey the Fuhrer!” That’s not how it was. He just accepted that suffering was necessary in the name of a higher cause. But there is a real lesson for us now. The parallel to Eichmann is not in the subjects’ behaviour but in Milgram’s: how people can blithely inflict suffering in the name of a higher cause, never have a moment’s doubt about what they’re doing, and be lauded for their efforts by their peers.
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