Social Irresponsibility in Management

maximum of 450 volts. The shock generators bore designations going from “Slight Shock” to “Danger
Severe Shock” to AXXX.” To convince the naive teacher of the authenticity of the experiment, he
himself was given a sample shock of 45 volts.

At first, no feedback from the learner was used. It was expected that the designations on the control
panel would be sufficient to curtail the subject’s obedience. Virtually all subjects, however, followed
instructions and administered the maximum shock.

Various forms of feedback from the learner were then introduced - e.g., the learner would cry out
in pain. While a large percentage of subjects continued to shock on command, many subjects did stop
the punishments; about one-third of the subjects stopped when they could hear the victim, and two-
thirds of the subjects broke off the experiment when they were placed in the same room as the victim
(who was a professional actor).

The obedient subjects followed instructions even though they were performing a task that was
distasteful to them [42] . This was apparent from the fact that few subjects would administer severe
shocks when they personally could decide on the level of punishment [41, 42]. Furthermore, the act of
shocking people was shown to lead to a sense of guilt [12]. Finally, subjects shocked on command
even though they thought that the learner was being seriously harmed; in Mantell [41), 28% of the
obedient subjects thought that the learner had probably died.

Milgram’s conclusion from the obedience studies was [42:6]¹

“... ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on
their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even
when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are
asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality,
relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”

Additional studies suggest that subjects pay little attention to the consequences of their actions. Orne
[53] was unsuccessful in devising a task that was so useless that the subject would not obey. In this
experiment, subjects would add up a series of random numbers and then destroy this work as ordered;
then they would move onto the next page to repeat the same process, etc. Subjects apparently assume
that no matter how absurd the task, some higher authority has good reason for demanding that it be
carried out. Similar results had also been reported by Frank [2l] where subjects persisted in an
unpleasant and senseless study on cracker eating.

¹ The obedience studies have been subjected to much criticism [70]. Concern has been expressed over
the well-being of the subject (Milgram’s results indicated that there was little danger and this was
supported by Ring et al. [57]), and also to the possibility of a tautology (Orne [53] with reply by
Milgram [42]).

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