by DK
However, many psychologists remained uneasy, and the study was ultimately crucial in the development of ethical standards of psychological experimentation. It helped to define important principles such as the avoidance of intentional deceit of participants, and the need to protect experimental participants from emotional suffering.
"Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process."
Stanley Milgram
Cross-cultural validity
Another criticism of Milgram’s study was that he used an unrepresentative sample: American men do not necessarily reflect the general population. Even so, Milgram was able to conclude that obedience was not a particular feature found in the minds of 20th-century Germans, but something more universal. A number of cross-cultural replications of the original experiment have demonstrated remarkably high consistency in results within societies, but slight differences between one country and another. For example, in most of North America and Europe, results are very similar to those found in Milgram’s original experiment, with very high percentages of obedience. Asian studies, however, show even greater levels of obedience (in East Asian and Muslim countries in particular), while aboriginal African and Latin American populations, as well as the Inuit peoples of Canada, show far less obedience.
American soldiers in Vietnam reported that their behavior became unacceptable by degrees—as with the shock generator—until they found themselves murdering innocents.
"Obedience to authority is not a feature of German culture, but a seemingly universal feature of human behavior."
Stanley Milgram
Virtual torture
In 2006, the psychologist Mel Slater set out to see what the effect would be if participants were made explicitly aware that the situation was not real. His replication used a computer simulation of the learner and shock process, so participants administering the shocks were fully aware that the learner was computer-generated. The experiment was run twice: first with the virtual learner communicating only by text, and then with the computer-generated model visible on screen. Those with only text contact with the learner had little trouble administering the shocks; but when the virtual learner was visible, participants acted exactly as they had in Milgram’s original experiment.
Society demands obedience
The notion of a society rests on an understanding that individuals are prepared to relinquish some personal autonomy and look to others of higher authority and social status to make decisions on a larger scale or from a higher, broader perspective. Even the most democratic of societies requires the rulings of a recognized, legitimate authority to take precedence over individual self-regulation, in pursuit of the greater collective good. In order for any society to function, its populace must agree to obey its rules. Legitimacy is, of course, the key, and there are countless historical examples of people using their authority to persuade others to commit crimes against humanity.
Equally importantly, Milgram showed that it is “not so much the kind of person a man is, as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.” Instead of examining personalities to explain crimes, he says, we should examine the context, or situation.
Milgram’s seminal study was heavily criticized at the time, not least because it painted an unappealing and chilling portrait of human nature. It is easier to believe that there are fundamental differences between the Nazis and the rest of humanity than to accept that in certain situations, many of us are capable of committing extraordinary acts of violence. Milgram held up a light to the dark realities concerning power and the consequences of our tendency to obey authority figures, and in so doing, he simultaneously absolved and made villains of us all.
The behavior of Nazis during World War II had been attributed to a prevalence of the “authoritarian personality” in the population; this was questioned by Milgram’s experiments.
"In wartime, a soldier does not ask whether it is good or bad to bomb a hamlet."
Stanley Milgram
STANLEY MILGRAM
Stanley Milgram was born in 1933 to a Jewish family in New York City. His Hungarian parents ran a bakery in the Bronx, and he attended James Monroe High School with Philip Zimbardo.
A high academic achiever and a leader among his peers, Milgram initially studied political science, but went on to receive a PhD in psychology from Harvard in 1960 under Gordon Allport. After working with Solomon Asch on conformity studies at Harvard, he became assistant professor at Yale, where he carried out his obedience experiments. In 1961, he married Alexandra Menkin, with whom he had two children. In 1963, he returned to Harvard, but was denied tenure because of the controversy surrounding his experiment, so he moved to the City University of New York, where he taught until his death at the age of 51.
Key works
1963 Behavioral Study of Obedience
1967 The Small World Problem
1974 Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View
See also: Solomon Asch • Serge Moscovici • Philip Zimbardo • Walter Mischel
IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Conformity
BEFORE
1935 Muzafer Sherif demonstrates how groups quickly come to develop a “social norm” in his autokinetic effect experiments.
1940s Kurt Lewin shows how people’s behavior changes as their situations are altered.
1963 Stanley Milgram conducts his obedience studies, which demonstrate that people will obey authority even if it means committing cruel acts.
AFTER
2002 British psychologists Steven Reicher and Alex Haslam extend Zimbardo’s study to explore positive rather than negative group behavior.
2004 Zimbardo defends a former Abu Ghraib prison guard in court, arguing that the circumstances caused the guard’s cruel behavior.
Stanley Milgram’s shocking obedience studies revealed that people will obey authority figures even if this entails acting against their own moral convictions. In the aftermath, Philip Zimbardo set out to discover how people would behave if they were put into a position of authority with unimpeded power. Would they willingly use (or abuse) the power granted to them? In 1971 he carried out the now-famous Stanford Prison experiment, using 24 middle-class American college students who had undergone tests to establish that they were mentally healthy.
On the flip of a coin the students were randomly assigned the role of either “guard” or “prisoner,” and one Sunday morning soon afterwards, the prisoners were arrested at their homes, booked at a real police station, then transferred to the basement of the Stanford University psychology department, which had been converted into a mock prison.
"Our study… reveals the power of social, institutional forces to make good men engage in evil deeds."
Philip Zimbardo
The prison environment
In order to make the experience as psychologically real as possible, prisoners were stripped, searched, deloused, and given uniforms and bedding upon their arrival. To heighten their sense of anonymity and dehumanization, they were addressed only by their given numbers, and each had a chain bolted around one ankle to serve as a reminder of their lack of freedom.
The guards wore military-style uniforms and sunglasses (to make eye contact impossible), and carried keys, whistles, handcuffs, and clubs. They were on duty 24 hours a day, and were given complete control over the prisoners, with permission to employ whatever tactics they saw fit in order to maintain order. To the researchers’ amazement, the environment quic
kly became so threatening to participants that the study had to be ended after only six days. Every guard became abusive and authoritarian; prisoners were denied food or bedding, hooded, chained, and made to clean toilet bowls with their hands. As the boredom increased, they used the prisoners as their playthings, making them take part in degrading games. After just 36 hours, one prisoner had to be released because of uncontrolled crying, fits of rage, and severe depression. When other prisoners showed symptoms of acute distress, Zimbardo realized the situation had become dangerous and ended the experiment.
Zimbardo’s experiment showed that good people can be induced into behaving in evil ways by immersion in “total situations” that have an apparently legitimizing ideology and approved rules and roles. The implications are vast, as Zimbardo explains: “Any deed that any human being has ever done, however horrible, is possible for any of us to do—under the right or wrong situational pressures.”
The “prisoners” rebelled against the “guards,” but the guards’ tactics became more aggressive. They began dividing the prisoners into groups, giving some rewards and others punishments.
PHILIP ZIMBARDO
Philip Zimbardo was born in New York City in 1933 to a Sicilian-American family, and was a classmate of Stanley Milgram at James Monroe High School in the Bronx. He went on to earn his BA degree from Brooklyn College, New York, and a PhD from Yale. He taught at several universities before moving to Stanford in 1968, where he is still a psychology professor.
In 2000, Zimbardo stated that he agreed with George Armitage Miller that it was time to “give psychology away to the public,” and his career has reflected this idea. In the 1980s he presented a popular TV series on “discovering psychology.” The American Psychological Foundation presented him with an award for Distinguished Lifetime Contributions to General Psychology in 2000, and two years later he was elected president of the American Psychological Association.
Key works
1972 The Stanford Prison Experiment
2007 The Lucifer Effect
2008 The Time Paradox
2010 Psychology and Life
See also: John B. Watson • Zing-Yang Kuo • Kurt Lewin • Elliot Aronson • Stanley Milgram • Muzafer Sherif
IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Liberation psychology
BEFORE
1965 Community psychology, a new discipline investigating the relationships between individuals and communities, arises from discussions at the Swampscott Conference, Massachusetts.
1970s A crisis over the relevance of social psychology, the study of links between social conditions, emotions, and behaviors, erupts in Britain, North America, and most acutely in Latin America.
AFTER
1988 The Latin American Institute of Mental Health and Human Rights is founded.
1997 US psychologists Isaac Prilleltensky and Dennis Fox publish Critical Psychology, highlighting how traditional psychology can help sustain injustice and social oppression.
Ignacio Martín-Baró made his claim that “trauma must be understood in terms of the relationship between the individual and society” after witnessing first-hand the social injustices and violence endemic to El Salvador in the 1980s. Rejecting the idea of an impartial, universal approach to psychology, he came to realize that psychologists must take into account the historical context and social conditions of the people they are studying. He believed that while some mental health problems reflect an abnormal reaction to reasonably normal circumstances, the problems specific to oppressed and exploited groups tend to reflect a perfectly understandable and normal reaction to abnormal circumstances. Martín-Baró decided that psychologists needed to be more aware of how living within a difficult context affects mental health, and that they should help the society being studied to transcend its history of oppression. In the mid-1980s, he launched the branch of liberation psychology, which is committed to improving the lives of all marginalized and oppressed people.
Liberation psychologists claim that traditional psychology has many inadequacies. It frequently fails to offer practical solutions to social problems; many of its principles are developed from artificial settings in wealthy countries, and so are unlikely to translate to different situations; it tends to ignore human moral qualities, such as hope, courage, and commitment; and its main goal seems to be to maximize pleasure, rather than considering how to awaken and drive the desire for justice or freedom.
"The challenge is to construct a new person in a new society."
Ignacio Martín-Baró
Traumatized societies
His collection Writings for a Liberation Psychology, published posthumously in 1994, captures several decades of Martín-Baró’s concerns. It addresses the use of psychology as an instrument of war and political manipulation, the role of religion in psychological warfare, and the impact of trauma and violence on mental health. Martín-Baró studied areas where dependent economies and severe inequalities had led to relentless poverty and social exclusion. He examined the psychological impact of civil war and oppression in El Salvador, the dictatorships in Argentina and Chile, and poverty in Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Brazil, and Costa Rica. Each involved a different set of circumstances, affecting the local population in unique ways. He concluded that the mental health issues that arise in one context will reflect the history of the place as well as its social and political environment, and that individuals must be treated with both these factors in mind.
Martín-Baró focused on Central America, but his ideas are relevant anywhere social and political turmoil disrupts daily life. His humane and impassioned perspective draws a crucial link between mental health and the struggle against injustice, and attempts to find fresh ways of addressing associated psychological issues more effectively.
IGNACIO MARTÍN-BARÓ
Ignacio Martín-Baró was born in Valladolid, Spain. In 1959, he joined the Jesuit order, and was sent to South America. There, he studied at the Catholic University in Quito, Ecuador, and at the Javeriana University in Bogotà, Colombia. In 1966, Martín-Baró, now a Jesuit priest, was sent to El Salvador. He continued his studies at the University of Central America in San Salvador, gaining a licentiate in psychology in 1975. He later earned a PhD in social psychology from the University of Chicago, before returning to the University of Central America and eventually becoming head of its psychology department. Martín-Baró was openly critical of El Salvador’s rulers, and in 1986 set up the University Institute of Public Opinion. He and five others were murdered by an army death squad for their exposure of political corruption and injustice.
Key works
1983 Action and Ideology
1989 System, Group and Power
1994 Writings for a Liberation Psychology
See also: Lev Vygotsky • Jerome Kagan
INTRODUCTION
In the early part of the 20th century, two main approaches in psychology examined the psychological development of humans from childhood to adulthood: the psychoanalytic theory of Freud gave an account of psychosexual development in children, and behaviorism explained the mechanics of the learning process. However, the study of development itself—the psychological, emotional, and perceptual changes that occur during a lifetime—did not evolve until the 1930s, when Jean Piaget overturned conventional thinking with the idea that a child is not just a “miniature adult” gaining knowledge as his or her body matures, but at the same time is also going through radical psychological changes.
Piaget raised some fundamental questions: whether we acquire knowledge gradually or in distinct stages; whether certain abil
ities are innate or learned; and how the environment affects development. His cognitive development theory suggested that a child’s growth into adulthood is divided into several developmental stages, and within each stage the child learns by doing rather than instruction. Piaget’s ideas set the stage for the new field of developmental psychology and shaped the curricula of schools up to the present day.
Other developmental theories soon emerged. Although broadly agreeing with Piaget’s findings, Lev Vygotsky argued that it was necessary for a child to have adult guidance at various stages in his learning, and also stressed the importance of a child’s social and cultural environment. Erik Erikson also built on Piaget’s ideas, identifying eight stages of psychosocial development, including the “identity crisis” of adolescence; while Lawrence Kohlberg came up with six stages of moral development in his studies.
With the “cognitive revolution” that followed World War II, psychologists such as Albert Bandura looked at the issue of development again, this time in the light of cognitive models of information processing. Bandura retained elements of both Piaget’s stages of development and Vygotsky’s social constructivism in his social learning theory. Cognitive psychology also brought new ideas about learning, especially the acquisition of language, and Noam Chomsky’s suggestion that this is an innate capability once more opened the nature versus nurture debate.