Stanley Milgram s Obedience Experiment

Transcription

1 1 Stanley Milgram s Obedience Experiment By Clarity Finder, 2014 slightly edited on Sept. 8, The following presentation, based on Doyle et al. (2009), describes Barry Richmond s 1 model of Milgram s experiment. Figure 1: Three important factors affect the willingness of the subject (Teacher) to delivering electric shocks to the (Learner):,, and the intensity of the shock (voltage). Also the subject may exhibit or hesitation the amount of which deps on her or his. Nevertheless, the subject s unless willingness is low enough. Insistence by actually follows the subject s. This can be indicated by connecting them with an arrow. We can do it later. Are there other implicit loops in Figure 1? The Teacher was reminded to the shocks by 15 volts each time the Learner incorrectly answers a word-pair. (Doyle et al., 2009, p. 5). Willingness to means increasing voltage and that creates a feedback loop or two in reality. In the simulation model, however, voltage is an exogenous variable, affected by time only. It grows by 15 volts per time unit. The variables of Figure 1 were clearly the most essential in Milgram s experiment and therefore included in the model. Resistance can be measured but what about? Should it be left out? Apparently not. It is a central variable in the model, something that needs to be explained why people are willing to inflict pain to an innocent person and how far they are willing to go so how to write an equation for it? Since willingness has to be formulated as an equation, the modeler decided that this variable is not affected directly by the s and. He specified a 1 Richmond died in A couple of brilliant articles on systems thinking written by him can be found here:

2 2 reference point for evaluating the effect of voltage on the subject s : max acceptable voltage. Figure 2a and b: Max acceptable voltage is the maximum voltage the subject can accept. In Figure 2a it is fixed while the voltage s. Willingness to wanes since voltage delivered is approaching the max acceptable value. In Figure 2b this process is faster as max acceptable voltage falls due to the s while the voltage is rising. The equation for is based on the gap between the acceptable and actual voltage, but willingness does not equal the difference. It has been defined so that 0 means no willingness at all while 1 means 100 % willingness. Equation 1 2 : Willingness to is a nonlinear function of the difference between voltage and max acceptable voltage. Within parentheses we can see table or coordinate pairs they can be displayed in the form of a table or a graph. The first value of each pair gives the difference (horizontal axis in the graph) and the second the corresponding level of willingness, which cannot be larger than 1 even if the difference were larger than 200. This fact shows in the shape of the red curve (eq. 1); it levels off at the, near the last pair (200, 1). Simplifying, we can say that the equation states this: When the difference (max acceptable voltage voltage) goes from 0 to 200, goes from 0 to 1. In fact, the first pair in the equation is -25 and -0.1 indicating that difference can go negative, but we simplified the statement since the experiment is terminated when willingness is zero indicating that the subject refuses to. The intensity of the shocks has reached the maximum the subject can accept. In that equation the values go from smallest to largest, but in simulation it is the other way round in this case. (I have run some simulations with Richmond s model.) The difference is largest at the outset, the voltage being initially 15 while max acceptable voltage equals 150. The difference is then 135 meaning that is high, between 0.9 and But where does the initial value, 150, of max acceptable voltage come from? Does this variable 2 Equation copied, see

3 3 have a counterpart in the real situation in the subject s mind? I can only ask because I don t know the topic well, nor the modeler s thoughts. So the subject is assumed to accept 150 volts initially. This value has been given arbitrarily by the modeler. This may be the reason: When the voltage ranged from , the Teacher heard the Learner yell, Ugh. When the intensity d to 150 volts, the Learner screamed Ugh! Experimenter! That s all. Get me out of here. I told you I had heart trouble. My heart s starting to bother me now. Get me out of here, please. My heart s starting to bother me. I refuse to go on. Let me out... (Doyle et al., 2009, p. 5). (The voice came from the tape recorder but the Teacher did not know it.) Indeed, one would think that the subject stopped at this point if not earlier. That did not usually happen, however. The startling result of Milgram s experiment was that 65 percent of the subjects delivered the maximum shock of 450 volts in the experiment even though the Learner had gone silent after 330 volts. Why doesn t the Teacher care? Many of them probably did very much but still d inflicting more and more pain. For instance, they looked at the experimenter () for guidance or advice on what to do, especially after the Learner asked to be let out of the experiment... (Doyle et al., 2009, p. 6). Throughout the experiment, subjects displayed varying degrees of tension and stress. Subjects were sweating, trembling, stuttering, biting their lips, groaning, digging their fingernails into their skin, and some were even having nervous laughing fits or seizures (Wikipedia). They were human beings like the rest of us. The following Figure shows what was basically going on according to Richmond s model. Figure 3: A model of compromising with a possibly fatal outcome. The flows are operating simultaneously but the rate of is higher causing max acceptable voltage to rise. This rise can be slower, however, than the rise of voltage during a simulation run meaning that the gap between voltage and max acceptable voltage gradually shrinks. If the idea of in- and outflow feels strange, you can also use a net flow.

4 4 net Figure 4: The effect of is subtracted from the effect of before the net result is added to the stock (accumulation of max acceptable voltage). There is still much to say about this model, so I ll probably complete the presentation later. I ll announce it then on my home page, But now I only show a couple of more pictures I ve made. Figure 5: There is a feedback loop now.

5 5 3 Total Volts 2 Anxiety growth Figure 6: An overall view of Richmond s model. Both anxiety and max acceptable voltage are levels in the subject s head. End, 2, and 3 have been termed ing from morals, ing from anxiety, and ing by experimenter, respectively, in my larger diagram 3. Total volts are merely counted in the model for ing that way when needed. The larger diagram contains more variables because of one-to-one correspondence with the model equations, but the structure is the same. Those equations could be condensed so that they would match the diagram of Figure 6. Reference: Doyle, J.K., K. Saeed, and J. Skorinko Personal versus Situational Dynamics: Implications of Barry Richmond s Models of Classic Experiments in Social Psychology. Draft 9/11/08. Proceedings of the 27 th International Conference of the System Dynamics Society. 3 See