The Shocking 35% No One is Talking About

Comply Without Argument, Affirm Without Questioning: The Milgram Experiment You Didn't Know You Were In

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During the age of the mini-skirt and at the height of Beatlemania, a scientist revealed something shocking about human nature. All it took was a lab coat and a little phrase like, “The experiment requires that you continue,” to convince 65% of people to kill a perfect stranger. As desperately horrible as that is, what gets talked about much less is that 35% of people refused.

These people sat in the same chair, heard the same instructions, faced the same lab-coat-dressed authority, and they refused to flip the switch and deliver deadly voltage to someone right around the corner. It’s been sixty years since Milgram’s experiments horrified the world. It’s time we start asking a more helpful question: What was different about the people who said no?

The Answers Found in the Research

According to Milgram’s original work, fully explored in his book, Obedience to Authority, among the factors that helped people to resist were the absence of the authority figure, and when the proximity to the subject receiving the shocks was closer, subjects were more likely to refuse to give more painful shocks.

Individuals who saw confederates refuse authority were also much more likely to refuse to deliver painful shocks. Courage does indeed call to courage.

Alan Elms, who worked as a research assistant to Stanley Milgram, wrote in his 2009 article Obedience Lite, that to further study personality variables, he invited 40 of Milgram’s past test subjects to return several months after they had participated to take personality tests and go through extensive interviews.

Of the 20 who had disobeyed under the most challenging circumstances to refuse, he did not find any dramatic personality difference from an opposing group of the most obedient test subjects. The two groups didn’t differ significantly in personality scales or on standards that looked at those drawn to social dominance.

Where that changed was in scales that measured social responsibility. Subjects who had defied the authority scored high in that attribute. Likewise, those who were especially obedient tended to score much higher in authoritarian tendencies. Highly obedient participants were consistently more authoritarian.

Later researchers, like Jerry Burger, have also pointed to the measure of empathic concern as another factor that can brace a person to defy authority.

What makes these observations noteworthy is that the people who defied authority maintained a personal sense of responsibility. This group was reported to say things like, “I can’t go on with this: no, this isn’t right,” or “I can’t do that to a man.” Speaking for themselves, this group refused to let the structure of authority absorb their moral responsibility.

It’s important to note that this wasn’t an obvious expression of fearlessness. One of the subjects who refused to give the shocks even apologized, saying, “No, I can’t continue. I’m sorry.” Again, reiterating a sense of personal responsibility went on to say, “One of the things I think is very cowardly is to try and shove the responsibility onto someone else.”

The resisters didn’t have obviously stronger moral convictions than the compliant participants. What they did have was a stronger sense that their actions were their own.

Implications for Today

Our current moment is dominated by an institutional culture. We are asked to defer our own judgment to credentialing bodies, professional standards, frameworks built on consensus, or other institutional authorities, with precious few situations where people are expected to personally endorse their reasoning for making moral choices. This is a pathway toward compliance.

And you don’t have to look very hard to find evidence of that all around. Despite pushback, many professional programs still require students to affirm ideological commitments as part of regular course evaluations. Entire fields have been constructed to answer the question, “Why do we do things this way?” with, “Because the accreditor requires it.”

Whenever a system asks you to comply without argument, to affirm without questioning, to enforce against those who don’t endorse, it is running a Milgram experiment on you. The only question is, how do you respond?

Questions to Mull Over

The 35% that refused to shock strangers provide important clues about the conditions that allow for resistance. Environmental factors help, but in the worst possible situations, it’s moral agency that makes the difference. That isn’t a fixed trait. It is a capacity. Specifically, moral agency is something that can be cultivated or eroded depending on how we build the structures around ourselves.

If we wanted to create a world that produced more people capable of resisting toxic authority, we could.

Right now, especially in higher education, we’ve been building the opposite and selecting for compliance. And it is graduates from these institutions that will go on to lead the future across all sectors of our country.

The question right now shouldn’t be whether you would have been able to resist the urge to obey shocking a man to death; rather, it should be, are we creating a world where institutionally and personally that is still even possible?

Further Reading

Obedience to Authority: An Experiment View by Stanley Milgram

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About

Diogenes in Exile began after I returned to grad school to pursue a master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at the University of Tennessee. What I found instead was a program saturated in Critical Theories ideology—where my Buddhist practice was treated as invalidating and where dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy was met with hostility. After witnessing how this ideology undermined both ethics and the foundations of good clinical practice, I made the difficult decision to walk away.

Since then, I’ve dedicated myself to exposing the ideological capture of psychology, higher education, and related institutions. My investigative writing has appeared in Real Clear Education, Heterodox STEM, Minding the Campus, The College Fix, and has been republished by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. I also speak and consult on policy reform to help rebuild public trust in once-respected professions.

Occasionally, I’m accused of being funny.

When I’m not writing or digging into documents, you’ll find me in the garden, making art, walking my dog,