Behind the Shock Machine (14 page)

Alan told me that he thought Milgram gave his subjects too easy an excuse when he reassured them—whatever voltage they had gone to—that their behavior was normal. It was understandable, Alan said, that Milgram wanted to make them feel better, to make sure that no one suffered from taking part, and to help them accept what had happened, but Alan felt that Milgram missed an opportunity to educate them about how to be better people. “I felt maybe it would be good for some participants to have some lingering feeling that maybe they had done something wrong by shocking people, and I think in some ethical sense it might have been good to set this up as some sort of ethical educational occasion for these people.”

When we finished the interview, it was a relief to get out into the fresh air. Outside the psychology building, we stopped a passing student, who agreed to take our photo. As we stood on the steps, Alan told me that one reason he got out of social psychology was because he “didn’t like having to mislead people in order to do an experiment.” I liked him for that. Alan put one hand against the small of my back, and in the other he proudly held a copy of Milgram’s book
Obedience to Authority
against his chest.
Click
.

Now I understood Herb’s anger. He was one of the subjects in the “heart attack” variation, condition 5 or 6, so his appointment for the experiment was in October 1961, when Milgram would have been busy with the demands of a new academic year. He didn’t meet Milgram in the lab but in his office a few days later, which suggests that Milgram was not observing the experiment in which Herb took part. Was Herb told that the learner was okay and that the machine wasn’t as dangerous as it looked? Whatever he was told didn’t reduce his anxiety. And he had left the lab still thinking that the man he’d shocked had a heart condition.

In the archives, a letter from Herb to Milgram dated March 16, 1962, indicates that Milgram sent Herb a copy of the most recent report on the research that he’d sent to the NSF.
¹⁸
When Herb confronted Milgram, it’s likely that Milgram confided the real purpose of the experiment and swore him to secrecy, as he did with at least one other subject.
¹⁹
Perhaps it was this, being taken into Milgram’s confidence, that won Herb over.

It was only subjects in the last two months of the research program who were told the truth about the experiment before they left the lab. Comments from subject questionnaires show that subjects in conditions 20, 23, and 24, conducted in March, April, and May 1962, were fully debriefed.
²⁰
But even then, the debriefing didn’t exactly offer an opportunity for subjects to vent their feelings. It was most often the experimenter, John Williams, who was left to reassure subjects about what had happened, even though he had no training for this role.

The following exchange was typical of the debriefing that took place in the final month of the research program. It took just a minute and
a half. The subject was a forty-seven-year-old product inspector at the manufacturer Remington Rand, who broke off the experiment at 150 volts when the learner demanded to be set free.

Williams: Let me tell you this, Mr. Wallace was not really being shocked. In fact, his name is McDonough and he’s a member of our team here. We are actually observing how people obey orders.

Subject 2316: Hmmm.

Williams: Actually, the research here is very important and we feel the results will be very interesting and so we had to set it up this way to make you think you were shocking someone and taking orders.

[Subject 2316 laughs]

Williams: It’s very similar to a situation a guy finds himself in the army a lot of times. So we’re not trying—
[calls out]
Jim, why don’t you come in and say hello to Mr.
[blank]
now that he’s in better spirits. Ah, we don’t like to fool people, but we have to set it up this way.

McDonough: Hi.

Subject 2316: I thought I was really hurting you.

McDonough: Feel better now, don’t you?

Subject 2316: Oh, sure.

Williams: You’re going to get a report on the project in a little over two months. We’ve been running it now for about a year and we’ve done over eight hundred men, and I think you’ll find the report very interesting when you do get it.

Subject 2316: Hmm.

Williams: I think you’ll be very happy you participated. I’d like to ask you not to speak about it to anyone—other than your wife, of course—because you may unknowingly speak to someone who’s going to be in the experiment.

Subject 2316: Oh, I see.

Williams: So if they know ahead of time then they won’t be . . . it wouldn’t be of any value. So until you get the report, don’t say anything. . . . Of course, when you get the report, you can talk to as many people as you want.

Subject 2316: Uh-huh.

Williams: There is one more thing. Could you indicate on this scale how you felt about participating from very sorry, very glad, and so on?

Subject 2316: Now that I know the circumstances . . .
[laughs]

Williams: Let me say one more thing. We’re very appreciative of . . . appreciate you giving us your time, and it certainly was a pleasure having you here.

Subject 2316: Well, it was a pleasure being here.

Williams: Good. I think you’ll enjoy the report when you get it. Thank you again for coming down tonight.

Subject 2316: Thank you for having me.
[To McDonough]
I’m sorry I didn’t hurt you.

[General laughter]

Williams:
[into microphone]
That was subject 2316; 2317 next.
²¹

Later in the same condition, a fuller debriefing took place, but it still took little more than a couple of minutes. Subject 2340 was a twenty-four-year-old tool-and-die maker who went to the maximum voltage.

Williams: Well, let me tell you this, this man wasn’t really being shocked.

Subject 2340: Oh, I see.

Williams: We’re very interested in your reactions to having to inflict pain on a person that you didn’t even know.

Subject 2340: Uh-huh.

Williams: See, he actually works with us as a team member, and he wasn’t really getting the shocks, you see.

Subject 2340: Oh, I see.

Williams: We’re really interested in seeing your reactions. We’re not trying to fool you in any way.

Subject 2340: Right.

Williams: We have to set it up this way so we can get true reactions from people. You really thought you were shocking this guy.

Subject 2340: Yes, I did. When I didn’t hear anything I was worried.

Williams: What’d you think when you didn’t hear anything else?

Subject 2340: I thought maybe he was just, uh, maybe he passed out or something.

Williams: Yeah.

Subject 2340: Then I—

Williams: You think he passed out?

Subject 2340: I didn’t think he did. I had a thought in my mind that he could have passed out and I was worried about him.

Williams: Well, you understand why we had to do it this way. See, it’s a very similar situation a nurse finds herself in when she has to administer a needle to a patient—she may be reluctant to do this, she may not want to hurt a patient, but the doctor tells her to so she goes ahead and does it. So this is a similar situation, you have to inflict a little pain on the other person—

Subject 2340: I didn’t like it.

Williams: What?

Subject 2340: I didn’t like it.

Williams: You didn’t like it? Well, many people don’t. Anyway, you’ll receive a report of this project when it’s over in a couple of months. Until that time we’d like to ask you not to say anything about it.

Subject 2340: Okay.

Williams: Until you get the report.

Subject 2340: Sure.

Williams: Then it will be all over and you can talk to people about it because you may talk to people who may be in it.

Subject 2340: Yeah, uh-huh.

Williams: And it wouldn’t be good if they knew ahead of time.

Subject 2340: I see.

Williams: So of course I think you’ll enjoy the report, I think you’ll understand what everything’s about . . . Jim, you want to come in and say hello to Mr.
[blank]
before he leaves. This is Mr. McDonough.

Subject 2340: Hi, glad to know you.

McDonough: Now it’s all over, huh. Now you don’t feel so bad, huh?

Williams: I hope you don’t feel too bad. Let me thank you for coming down. We certainly do appreciate you giving us your time.

Subject 2340: Well, I’ll go out now and have about three cigarettes.

Williams: We certainly do appreciate you coming down. I think that you’ll find the report very interesting.

Subject 2340: I don’t know much about it, to tell you the truth.

Williams: We do research, our current research, we do research of all types . . .

[Voices fading]
²²

Both of these subjects were in condition 23. Once again, they were not told the whole truth, and what they were told they were instructed to keep secret. What’s both typical and striking about these excerpts is that for Williams, who had by that point conducted over 750 of these experiments, the experiment itself was purely routine. He delivered the debriefing as a monologue, in much the same brisk and authoritative way that he conducted the rest of the experiment, and did not invite questions or discussion. On the tapes of the experiments in condition 23, one of the few conditions in which subjects were told that they had been tricked, the pattern of debriefing across all
subjects, whether obedient or disobedient, was the same. They didn’t get much more than a minute and a half and a handshake before they were shown the door.

And yet Milgram had learned his experimental techniques from Solomon Asch and had admired Asch’s skills in debriefing.

In his private papers, Milgram wrote that, in watching Asch interviewing his subjects after the group pressure experiment was over, he was

indeed impressed with the extreme care and sensititivity [
sic
] with which he questioned the subject and explained to him the purposes and implications of the experiment. There is no question that he leaned over backwards to make the subjects’ participation an instructing and enriching personal experience and in my estimation he was highly successful in achieving his aim.
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Milgram’s desire to keep his research secret to avoid jeopardizing the results allowed him to justify not telling his subjects the truth until much later. In private papers, Milgram admitted that his ambition outweighed his altruism. In August 1962, he wrote:

It would be plesant [
sic
] to remark that these experiments were undertaken with a view toward their possible benift [
sic
] to humanity; that knowledge of social man, in this instance, was sought for its possible application to the betterment of social life. . . . Moreover, considered as a personal motive of the author the possible benefits that might redound to humanity withered to insignificance alongside the strident demands of intellectual curiosity. When an investigator keeps his eyes open throughout a scientific study, he learns things about himself as well as about his subjects, and the observations do not always flatter.
²⁴

Despite his admiration for the caring way in which Asch dealt with his subjects, Milgram acknowledged that he allowed his intellectual ruthlessness to get the upper hand.

* * *

It took thirty years for Bob Lee to realize he’d been had. And it still rankled.

Bob lived in East Haven, on a road overlooking Long Island Sound. In summer, it’s bumper to bumper with expensive SUVs on their way to Long Island, but when I visited it was May, cool and windy. The water was gunmetal gray and the traffic light.

Bob presided over the lounge room from a large leather chair that rustled and groaned each time he moved. He was a big man; he looked like he could have been a boxer or a football player. At one time he was a barman, and I could imagine him easily tossing drunks out onto the street. He looked like someone you wouldn’t have messed with in his younger days. He told me, “Somewhere, someone should have come to me in all these years and told me. I don’t think that was right, what they did to me.”

Perhaps Bob had simply ignored the report that explained the experiment when it arrived, six months after he’d taken part. Maybe he saw the crest or the letterhead and threw it, unopened, into the trash. Maybe it got lost in the mail. If he’d read it, he would have seen in the opening paragraph, “At the time you were in the experiment it was not possible for us to tell you everything about the study. Many questions probably remain in your mind which we would now like to clear up for you.”
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