Peter Sarsgaard as Stanley Milgram in "Experimenter."
Peter Sarsgaard as Stanley Milgram in “Experimenter.”

Late last fall, Experimenter brought classic experimental social science to Hollywood (it’s currently streaming on Netflix). The film depicts Stanley Milgram’s classic experimental obedience studies, where participants were asked by an experimenter to deliver a series of escalating shocks to a “learner” when he/she committed an error on a test. Unbeknownst to the participants, the “learner” was actually a confederate, and no shocks were actually delivered. Milgram found that 65% of the participants escalated to “delivering” the final 450-volt shock—far past dangerous levels. Milgram performed 19 variations of the experiment, including increasing the proximity of the participant and learner (that is, making them better known to each other, which decreased participant compliance) and using only females (which yielded similar results). Apart from the studies’ success at demonstrating the social forces that shape behavior, they have been a cornerstone of ethics in research debates in the social sciences.

Early critics claimed that the participants’ well-being was put at risk, due to the “distress [that] may have resulted from shock at what the experimenter was doing to them as well as from what they thought they were doing to their victims” (Baumrind 423).
  • Stanley Milgram. 1963. “Behavioral Study of Obedience,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67: 371–378.
  • Stanley Milgram. 1974. Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. London: Tavistock Publications.
  • Diana Baumrind. 1964. “Some Thoughts on Ethics of Research: After Reading Milgram’s ‘Behavioral Study of Obedience,'”American Psychologist 19(6): 421.
Numerous quasi-replications of the study have tweaked Milgram’s methodology to match contemporary ethical considerations. Milgram’s findings have been corroborated in replications that do not go to high voltage levels and in virtual simulations of the experiment. More recent work has added nuance, as well, finding variance in “obedience” based on the legitimacy of the “teacher” and the personality propensities and beliefs of the participant.