17. Stanley Milgram on Obedience to Authority

In this episode we unpack American Social Psychologist Stanley Milgram's 1974 book "Obedience to Authority."

This book explores...

-Why we lose our sense of moral responsibility when taking orders

-Why we are so bad at predicting our capacity to be obedient

-Why the desire to be polite can lead us to do evil

Links to Reading and Other Books/Movies Mentioned

Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram

CRT: An Introduction by Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic

Cat Person by Kristen Roupenian (short story)

Experimenter (movie about Stanley Milgram)

A Hidden Life by Terrence Malick (film)

**note** reading is not required to enjoy the episode!

Host: Zach Stehura UnpackingIdeas.com

Guest: Claire Bevan [email protected]

Theme Music: Polyenso listen here

Timestamps

00:00:00 Introduction

00:02:52 Historical context of the Milgram Experiment

00:05:00 Asch’s Conformity Experiment

00:06:57 Milgram’s Existential Questions for the Experiment

00:09:25 Milgram’s Personal Motivation for the Experiments

00:09:53 Summary of the Experiment

00:15:012 Milgram’s Hypothesis for the Experiment

00:17:25 Results of the Experiment

00:18:39 the Disconnect between our predictions and reality

00:19:50 The Attribution Error

00:21:07 The Agentic State/Loss of Moral Responsibility

00:25:47 The Horrific Consequences of the Division of Labor in Society

00:28:12 Doing What We’re Told as a Way of Preserving Cognitive Energy

00:32:35 Victim Blaming

00:33:10 Dehumanization feedback loop

00:38:26 Variations of the Experiment

00:39:20 Proximity of Experimenter to Subject

00:43:35 Proximity of Subject to Victim

00:47:47 Power in Numbers in Dissent

00:51:30 Not Seeing Disobedience as an Option

00:54:08 Counteranthropromorphism

00:56:36 More Variations

00:58:52 Motivations for Dissent

01:01:30 The Sequential Nature of Action

01:03:43 The Unknown of Dissent

01:04:22 The Moment of Bravery to Say No

01:05:08 Obeying out of a sense of Politeness

01:09:49 Feeling Bad After Doing the Right Thing

01:12:28 Profiles of Subjects

01:13:22 Obedience to God as an Antidote to Obedience to Corruption

01:18:14 Feeling Bad vs. Doing Good

01:20:18 The Effects of the Experiment on the Subjects

01:23:08 The Ethics of the Experiment

01:24:40 Lessons Learned for the Experiment

01:29:16 Variations we would have liked to see

01:32:22 Wrapping Up/Outro