Janus (13 page)
Authors: Arthur Koestler
the egotism of the group
feeds on the altruism of its members
.
The 'infernal dialectics' of this process is reflected on every level
of the various social holarchies. Patriotism is the noble virtue of
subordinating individual interests to the interests of the nation; yet
it gives rise to chauvinism, the militant expression of those higher
interests. Loyalty to the clan produces clannishness;
esprit de corps
blossoms into arrogant cliquishness; religious fervour into zealotry;
the Sermon on the Mount into the Church militant.
Let us now turn to the experimental confirmation of our theoretical
schema which has recently been provided, in a rather surprising manner,
by the psychological laboratories in Yale and other universities.
3
The series of highly original experiments, which I propose to describe
in some detail, were started by Dr Stanley Milgram at the Psychology
Department in Yale University, and repeated by various experimental
laboratories in Germany, Italy, Australia and South Africa. The purpose
of the experiments was to discover the limits of the average person's
obedience to authority, when ordered to inflict severe pain on an innocent
victim in the interests of a noble cause. Authority was represented
by a figure of professional appearance in a laboratory coat; I shall
call him the Prof. The noble cause was Education; more precisely, the
experiment was purportedly designed to provide answers to the problem
whether punishing the pupil for his mistakes had a positive effect on the
learning process. It involved three people: the Prof, who was in charge
of the proceedings; the learner or victim; and the experimental subject,
who was asked by the Prof to act as teacher and to punish the learner
each time he gave the wrong reply. Punishment was by electric shocks of
growing severity, administered by the 'teacher' on the Prof's orders.
The 'learner' or victim was strapped into a kind of electric chair,
with an electrode attached to his wrist. The 'teacher' was seated in front
of an impressive shock-generator which had a key-board of thirty switches,
ranging from 15 volts to 450 volts (i.e., a 15 volt increment from one
switch to the next). There were also verbal inscriptions on the machine
ranging from
SLIGHT SHOCK
to
INTENSE SHOCK
to
DANGER -- SEVERE SHOCK
.
In fact the whole gruesome set-up was based on make-believe. The 'victim'
was an actor hired by the Prof. The shock-generator was a dummy. Only the
'teacher', at whom the experiment was aimed, believed in the reality of
the shocks he was ordered to administer, and of the shrieks of pain and
cries for mercy uttered by the 'victim'.
The 'teachers' -- i.e., the real subjects of the experiment -- were
volunteers from all walks of life between the ages of twenty and fifty,
who came to the Yale laboratory attracted by newspaper advertisements
to participate in 'a scientific study of memory and learning' (they
were paid a modest four dollars per hour). Typical subjects were
postal clerks, high-school teachers, salesmen, engineers and manual
labourers. Altogether, more than a thousand volunteers were tested in
Yale alone.
The basic procedure of the experiment was as follows. The 'pupil' was
given to read a long list of paired words, e.g., blue box -- nice day --
wild duck -- etc. Then, in the 'examination' he was given one test-word,
for instance, 'blue', with four alternative answers, e.g., ink, box, sky,
lamp, and had to indicate which was the correct answer. The 'teacher'
was instructed by the Prof to administer a shock each time the pupil
gave a wrong response, and moreover 'to move one level higher on the
shock-generator each time the learner gives the wrong answer.
To make sure that the 'teacher' was aware of what he was doing, the actor
who played the role of the victim uttered complaints which increased
in stridency according to the voltage, from 'mild grunts' starting
at 75 volts, in a crescendo, until at 150 volts the victim cried out
'Get me out of here! I won't be in the experiment any more! I refuse to
go on.' (Remember that the 'teacher' believed that the victim too was a
volunteer.) 'At 315 volts, after a violent scream, the victim reaffirmed
vehemently that he was no longer a participant. He provided no answers,
but screamed in agony whenever a shock was administered. After 330 volts
he was not heard from. . . .' Yet the Prof instructed the subject to
treat no answer as a wrong answer and to continue to increase the shock
level according to schedule. After three shocks of 450 volts he called
off the experiment.
How many people, in an average population, do you think would obey
the command to carry on with the task of torturing the victim to the
limit of 450 volts? The answer seems to be a foregone conclusion:
perhaps one in a thousand, a pathological sadist. Before starting his
experiments, Milgram actually asked a group of psychiatrists to predict
the outcome. 'With remarkable similarity they predicted that virtually
all subjects would refuse to obey the experimenter.' The consensus of
the thirty-nine psychiatrists who answered the questionnaire was that
'most subjects would not go beyond 150 volts (i.e., when the victim
asks for the first time to be released). They expected that only 4%
would reach 300 volts, and that only a pathological fringe of about one
in a thousand would administer the highest shock on the board.' [2]
In actual fact,
over 60 per cent
of the subjects at Yale continued to
obey the Prof to the very end -- the 450 volt limit. When the experiment
was repeated in Italy, South Africa and Australia, the percentage of
obedient subjects was somewhat higher. In Munich it was 85 per cent.
Before going any further, let me clarify a few points relating to the
experimental set-up.
First, the Prof had no power over his volunteer subjects comparable to
that of an army officer or an office boss or even a school teacher. He had
no power to punish the subject who refused to administer further shocks,
nor did he have any financial or other incentives to offer. (It was
understood that volunteers would only be employed on a single occasion.)
How then did the Prof impose his authority on the 'teacher, and induce
him to continue with his gruesome task? There was no bullying, nor any
eloquent persuasion. The Prof's procedure was rigidly standardized:
nearly two-thirds of all experimental subjects, regardless of country and
of the method of soliciting volunteers. It worked even when the 'victim'
complained of a heart condition and the maximum shocks seemed to constitute
a danger to his life. That humane people are capable of committing inhuman
acts when acting as members of an army or a fanatical mob has always been
taken for granted. The importance of the experiments was that they revealed
how little was needed to push theni across the psychic boundary which
separates the behaviour of decent citizens from dehumanized SS guards.
The fragility of that boundary -- which two-thirds of the subjects crossed
-- came as an utter surprise even to psychiatrists, whose recorded
predictions turned out to be totally -- though understandably -- wrong.
A comfortable way to evade the uncomfortable problem with which these
results confront us, is to put the blame on the repressed aggressive
impulses of the subjects, for which the experiments provide a socially
respectable outlet. This interpretation is in the traditional line of
Freud's 'urge to destruction', or Lorenz's 'killer-instinct' -- a view
which, as I have argued before, is contradicted by both the historical
and psychological evidence. Milgram found an elegant method to refute
this facile explanation, and to demonstrate that
which the 'teacher' was told that he was free to inflict on the learner
any
shock level of his own choice on any of the trials --
all subjects administered the lowest shocks on the control panel,
the mean shock level being 54 volts. [Remember that the victim's first
mild complaint came only at 7S volts.] But if destructive impulses were
really pressing for release, and the subjects could justify their use
of high shock levels in the cause of science, why did they not make the
'learners' suffer? There was little if any tendency in the subjects to
do this. One or two, at most [out of 40 subjects]*, seemed to derive
any satisfaction from shocking the learner. The levels were in no way
comparable to that obtained when the subjects were ordered to shock the
victim. There was an order-of-magnitude difference.'
an average of 25 out of 40 subjects administered the maximum shock of
450 volts. In the free-choice experiment 38 out of 40 did not go beyond
150 volts (victim's first loud protest) and only two subjects went up
to 325 and 450 respectively.
To clinch the argument, Milgram quotes other experiments, carried out
by his colleagues Buss and Berkowitz in a similar set-up.
pleasure from shocking the victim, showed various symptoms of emotional
strain and distress. Some broke into a sweat, others pleaded with the
Prof to stop, or protested that the experiment was cruel and stupid. Yet
two-thirds nevertheless went on to the bitter end.
What made them persist in a task that was obviously distasteful to them
and in blatant contradiction to their individual standards of ethics?
Milgram's analysis, apart from some differences in terminology, is on
the same lines as the theoretical considerations set out in previous
chapters. He recognizes the profound implications of the hierarchic
concept*: to wit,
the 'infernal dialectics' in man's condition. It is not, as the facile
catch -- phase goes, his 'innate aggressiveness' (i.e., his self-assertive
tendency) which transforms harmless citizens into torturers, but their
self-transcending devotion to a cause, symbolized by the Prof in the
role of the leader. It is
feeds on the altruism of its members
.
The 'infernal dialectics' of this process is reflected on every level
of the various social holarchies. Patriotism is the noble virtue of
subordinating individual interests to the interests of the nation; yet
it gives rise to chauvinism, the militant expression of those higher
interests. Loyalty to the clan produces clannishness;
esprit de corps
blossoms into arrogant cliquishness; religious fervour into zealotry;
the Sermon on the Mount into the Church militant.
Let us now turn to the experimental confirmation of our theoretical
schema which has recently been provided, in a rather surprising manner,
by the psychological laboratories in Yale and other universities.
3
The series of highly original experiments, which I propose to describe
in some detail, were started by Dr Stanley Milgram at the Psychology
Department in Yale University, and repeated by various experimental
laboratories in Germany, Italy, Australia and South Africa. The purpose
of the experiments was to discover the limits of the average person's
obedience to authority, when ordered to inflict severe pain on an innocent
victim in the interests of a noble cause. Authority was represented
by a figure of professional appearance in a laboratory coat; I shall
call him the Prof. The noble cause was Education; more precisely, the
experiment was purportedly designed to provide answers to the problem
whether punishing the pupil for his mistakes had a positive effect on the
learning process. It involved three people: the Prof, who was in charge
of the proceedings; the learner or victim; and the experimental subject,
who was asked by the Prof to act as teacher and to punish the learner
each time he gave the wrong reply. Punishment was by electric shocks of
growing severity, administered by the 'teacher' on the Prof's orders.
The 'learner' or victim was strapped into a kind of electric chair,
with an electrode attached to his wrist. The 'teacher' was seated in front
of an impressive shock-generator which had a key-board of thirty switches,
ranging from 15 volts to 450 volts (i.e., a 15 volt increment from one
switch to the next). There were also verbal inscriptions on the machine
ranging from
SLIGHT SHOCK
to
INTENSE SHOCK
to
DANGER -- SEVERE SHOCK
.
In fact the whole gruesome set-up was based on make-believe. The 'victim'
was an actor hired by the Prof. The shock-generator was a dummy. Only the
'teacher', at whom the experiment was aimed, believed in the reality of
the shocks he was ordered to administer, and of the shrieks of pain and
cries for mercy uttered by the 'victim'.
The 'teachers' -- i.e., the real subjects of the experiment -- were
volunteers from all walks of life between the ages of twenty and fifty,
who came to the Yale laboratory attracted by newspaper advertisements
to participate in 'a scientific study of memory and learning' (they
were paid a modest four dollars per hour). Typical subjects were
postal clerks, high-school teachers, salesmen, engineers and manual
labourers. Altogether, more than a thousand volunteers were tested in
Yale alone.
The basic procedure of the experiment was as follows. The 'pupil' was
given to read a long list of paired words, e.g., blue box -- nice day --
wild duck -- etc. Then, in the 'examination' he was given one test-word,
for instance, 'blue', with four alternative answers, e.g., ink, box, sky,
lamp, and had to indicate which was the correct answer. The 'teacher'
was instructed by the Prof to administer a shock each time the pupil
gave a wrong response, and moreover 'to move one level higher on the
shock-generator each time the learner gives the wrong answer.
To make sure that the 'teacher' was aware of what he was doing, the actor
who played the role of the victim uttered complaints which increased
in stridency according to the voltage, from 'mild grunts' starting
at 75 volts, in a crescendo, until at 150 volts the victim cried out
'Get me out of here! I won't be in the experiment any more! I refuse to
go on.' (Remember that the 'teacher' believed that the victim too was a
volunteer.) 'At 315 volts, after a violent scream, the victim reaffirmed
vehemently that he was no longer a participant. He provided no answers,
but screamed in agony whenever a shock was administered. After 330 volts
he was not heard from. . . .' Yet the Prof instructed the subject to
treat no answer as a wrong answer and to continue to increase the shock
level according to schedule. After three shocks of 450 volts he called
off the experiment.
How many people, in an average population, do you think would obey
the command to carry on with the task of torturing the victim to the
limit of 450 volts? The answer seems to be a foregone conclusion:
perhaps one in a thousand, a pathological sadist. Before starting his
experiments, Milgram actually asked a group of psychiatrists to predict
the outcome. 'With remarkable similarity they predicted that virtually
all subjects would refuse to obey the experimenter.' The consensus of
the thirty-nine psychiatrists who answered the questionnaire was that
'most subjects would not go beyond 150 volts (i.e., when the victim
asks for the first time to be released). They expected that only 4%
would reach 300 volts, and that only a pathological fringe of about one
in a thousand would administer the highest shock on the board.' [2]
In actual fact,
over 60 per cent
of the subjects at Yale continued to
obey the Prof to the very end -- the 450 volt limit. When the experiment
was repeated in Italy, South Africa and Australia, the percentage of
obedient subjects was somewhat higher. In Munich it was 85 per cent.
Before going any further, let me clarify a few points relating to the
experimental set-up.
First, the Prof had no power over his volunteer subjects comparable to
that of an army officer or an office boss or even a school teacher. He had
no power to punish the subject who refused to administer further shocks,
nor did he have any financial or other incentives to offer. (It was
understood that volunteers would only be employed on a single occasion.)
How then did the Prof impose his authority on the 'teacher, and induce
him to continue with his gruesome task? There was no bullying, nor any
eloquent persuasion. The Prof's procedure was rigidly standardized:
At various points in the experiment the subject would turn to theOne could hardly call this technique brain-washing. And yet it worked on
experimenter [the Prof] for advice on whether he should continue to
administer shocks. Or he would indicate that he did not wish to go on.
The experimenter responded with a sequence of 'prods', using as many
as necessary to bring the subject into line.
Prod 1: Please continue or Please go on.
Prod 2: The experiment requires that you continue.
Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue.
Prod 4: You have no other choice, you must go on.
The experimenter's tone of voice was at all times firm,
but not impolite.
If the subject asked if the learner was liable to suffer permanent
physical injury, the experimenter said: 'Although the shocks may
be painful, there is no permanent tissue damage, so please go
on.' (Followed by prods 2, 3 and 4, if necessary.)
If the subject said that the learner did not want to go on,
the experimenter replied: 'Whether the learner likes it or not,
you must go on until he has learned all the word pairs correctly. So
please go on.' (Followed by Prods 2, 3 and 4, if necessary.)3
nearly two-thirds of all experimental subjects, regardless of country and
of the method of soliciting volunteers. It worked even when the 'victim'
complained of a heart condition and the maximum shocks seemed to constitute
a danger to his life. That humane people are capable of committing inhuman
acts when acting as members of an army or a fanatical mob has always been
taken for granted. The importance of the experiments was that they revealed
how little was needed to push theni across the psychic boundary which
separates the behaviour of decent citizens from dehumanized SS guards.
The fragility of that boundary -- which two-thirds of the subjects crossed
-- came as an utter surprise even to psychiatrists, whose recorded
predictions turned out to be totally -- though understandably -- wrong.
A comfortable way to evade the uncomfortable problem with which these
results confront us, is to put the blame on the repressed aggressive
impulses of the subjects, for which the experiments provide a socially
respectable outlet. This interpretation is in the traditional line of
Freud's 'urge to destruction', or Lorenz's 'killer-instinct' -- a view
which, as I have argued before, is contradicted by both the historical
and psychological evidence. Milgram found an elegant method to refute
this facile explanation, and to demonstrate that
... the act of shocking the victim does not stem from destructiveTo prove his point, he carried out a further series of experiments in
urges but from the fact that the subjects have become integrated
into a social structure and are unable to get out of it. Suppose the
experimenter instructed the subject to drink a glass of water. Does
this mean the subject is thirsty? Obviously not, for he is simply
doing what he is told to do. It is the essence of obedience that
the action carried out does not correspond to the motives of the
actor but is initiated in the motive system of those higher up in
the social hierarchy.'
which the 'teacher' was told that he was free to inflict on the learner
any
shock level of his own choice on any of the trials --
... the highest levels on the generator, the lowest, any in between,Though given full opportunity to inflict pain on the learner, almost
or any combination of levels ... [5]
all subjects administered the lowest shocks on the control panel,
the mean shock level being 54 volts. [Remember that the victim's first
mild complaint came only at 7S volts.] But if destructive impulses were
really pressing for release, and the subjects could justify their use
of high shock levels in the cause of science, why did they not make the
'learners' suffer? There was little if any tendency in the subjects to
do this. One or two, at most [out of 40 subjects]*, seemed to derive
any satisfaction from shocking the learner. The levels were in no way
comparable to that obtained when the subjects were ordered to shock the
victim. There was an order-of-magnitude difference.'
* The experimental series consisted of batches of 40 subjects of mixedIn the original experiments, when the teacher acted on the Prof's orders,
ages and professions.
an average of 25 out of 40 subjects administered the maximum shock of
450 volts. In the free-choice experiment 38 out of 40 did not go beyond
150 volts (victim's first loud protest) and only two subjects went up
to 325 and 450 respectively.
To clinch the argument, Milgram quotes other experiments, carried out
by his colleagues Buss and Berkowitz in a similar set-up.
In typical experimental manipulations, they frustrated the subjectThe vast majority of the experimental subjects, far from deriving any
to see whether he would administer higher shocks when angry. But
the effect of these manipulations was minuscule compared with the
levels obtained under obedience. That is to say, no matter what
these experimenters did to anger, irritate or frustrate the subject,
he would at most move up one or two shock levels, say from shock
level 4 to level 6 [90 volts]. This represented a genuine increment
in aggression. But there remained an order-of-magnitude difference
in the variation introduced in his behaviour this way, and under
conditions where he was taking orders. [7]
pleasure from shocking the victim, showed various symptoms of emotional
strain and distress. Some broke into a sweat, others pleaded with the
Prof to stop, or protested that the experiment was cruel and stupid. Yet
two-thirds nevertheless went on to the bitter end.
What made them persist in a task that was obviously distasteful to them
and in blatant contradiction to their individual standards of ethics?
Milgram's analysis, apart from some differences in terminology, is on
the same lines as the theoretical considerations set out in previous
chapters. He recognizes the profound implications of the hierarchic
concept*: to wit,
that . . . when individuals enter a condition of hierarchic control,Here, then, we have the experimental confirmation of what I have called
the mechanism which ordinarily regulates individual impulses is
suppressed and ceded to the higher-level component . . . [8]
The individuals who enter into such hierarchies are, of necessity,
modified in their functioning . . . [9] This transformation
corresponds precisely to the central dilemma of our experiment:
how is it that a person who is usually decent and courteous acts
with severity against another person within the experiment? . . . [10]
The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching
consequence of submission to authority . . . [11]
Most subjects in the experiment see their behaviour in a larger context
that is benevolent and useful to society -- the pursuit of scientific
truth. The psychological laboratory has a strong claim to legitimacy
and evokes trust and confidence in those who perform there. An action
such as shocking a victim, which in isolation appears evil, acquires
a totally different meaning when placed in this setting . . . [12]
Morality does not disappear, but acquires a radically different
focus: the subordinate person feels shame and pride depending
on how adequately he has performed the actions called for by
authority. Language provides numerous terms to pinpoint this type
of morality: loyalty, duty, discipline . . . [13]
* I was gratified by the generous references in his book to the
hierarchic mode proposed in The Ghost in the Machine.
the 'infernal dialectics' in man's condition. It is not, as the facile
catch -- phase goes, his 'innate aggressiveness' (i.e., his self-assertive
tendency) which transforms harmless citizens into torturers, but their
self-transcending devotion to a cause, symbolized by the Prof in the
role of the leader. It is
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