Holocaust: The Milgram Experiment Results

Mark Twain brilliantly once said: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Putting the philosophical interpretation aside, is it possible for a past incident to happen once again? On a bigger and more sensitive topic, is it possible for the Holocaust to happen again?  Most, if not all people, would certainly think to themselves: “No, I sure hope not.” Hoping that something doesn’t happen necessarily doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. Stanley Milgram created an experiment to understand how people ultimately end up doing something they wouldn’t normally think of doing. Milgram raised some good questions, and in the end, gave substantial evidence as to why people have blind obedience to authority.

Being a Jewish kid, Milgram was concerned that the Holocaust could happen again in America, but people would often tell him ‘that was Nazi Germany, that was then and this is now. He challenged people by asking them “would you kill if an authority figure, like Hitler, challenged you to do so?” Of course, they responded ‘no,’ but ultimately Milgram asked “how do you know unless you are put into the situation?” Milgram decided to put that theory to the test.

In his famous “Obedience” study he took 40 males aged 20-50 and separated them into two groups. They were told it was a test on improving memory. The ‘teachers’ were responsible to administer a simple word-pair test to the 'learner'. If the ‘learner’ got a question wrong the teacher would administer a shock starting at 15 volts, which would increase for every wrong answer, ultimately ending at 450 volts. The volts ranged from a 'slight shock' to 'DANGER: severe shock.' Milgram would be the ultimate ‘authority figure’ dressed in a lab coat and acted as the ‘influencing agent.’ His motive was to understand the unthinkable: ‘how the German people can permit the extermination of the jews without any limitation of conscience?’ The experiment was rigged unbeknownst to the 'teachers', the reactions of the  ‘learner’ were pre-recorded and the ‘teacher’ sat behind a wall with the shock machine. If the teacher would disobey or question what they were doing Milgram would tell them to continue the experiment regardless of the outcome, in the end, Milgram assumed all responsibility.  Ultimately 60-65% went all the way to 450 volts. According to Milgram one of the things that are a prerequisite for carrying out evil acts is  ‘shed responsibility from your shoulders and hand it over to the person in charge.’ The nazis were blindly obedient to Hitler, where 60-65% of participants were blindly obedient to Milgram. Over the span of 19 different experiments and small variations to one aspect of the situation, Milgram had obtained obedience as high as 90%. Milgram proves here that humans are inherently obedient. I believe that Milgram’s experiments, although unethical due to deception, were an interesting comparison to what happened in Nazi Germany.

Because the responsibility ‘fell’ on the authority figure, participants were much more likely to comply seeing that they wouldn’t be punished for not continuing. Something that jumped out at me about Milgram’s experiment was that that there weren’t any consequences given to the ‘teachers’ for not obeying the authority figure. It made me wonder if the percentage of people obeying would have been different had there been a punishment to the teacher for not complying. Although that would also add to the unethical nature of the experiment it is an interesting concept in my opinion. One thing that Philip Zimbardo pointed out about the experiment is that nobody stopped to ask: 'it doesn't make sense for me to keep shocking. How can I be improving his memory if he's unconscious or dead?' Participants did stop occasionally because they felt wrong for continuing, but how different would things have been if somebody asked the right things. 

Shifting gears slightly, there was a teacher by the name of Jane Elliot who experimented on discrimination  Jane Elliot’s ‘Blue eye brown eye’ simulation, although quite different from Milgram’s experiment, could also give insight into the possibility of something extreme like the idea of the Holocaust happening again. The purpose of her experiment was to educate her students and give them an up-close experience on racism discrimination following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She first tried on her young students, and ultimately replicated it to adult audiences for years to come. In her experiment, she separated blue-eyed people from brown-eyed people and began to say that one color is superior to the other. She would say irrational things like “melanin makes eyes darker, and makes people smarter and more hard-working” The subjects began to feel the effects of superiority and inferiority based on what Elliot was yelling out about them. This was a way to show people the reality of racism and what minorities had to live with daily. She received a lot of criticism but continued her experiment and continues to educate people on the severity of racism. In this small group setting Elliot was able to convince one side of the room that they were better than the other because of their eye color. On a larger scale, Hitler was able to convince the German people that they were the ‘superior’ race and the Jews were inferior. They both were able to persuade one group that they were better than the other.

In the end, I think Milgram portrayed how humans are inherently obedient. To be able to conduct the same experiment (slightly varied each time) and produce the same results is eye-opening. His experiment has been replicated several times all over the world and the results were the same if not almost the same every time. This was all regardless of gender as well, so men and women are inherently obedient in the situation. There is no way of knowing if something like the Holocaust could happen again, but Milgram was a pioneer for trying to understand how it, if at all, could be possible.