Behind the Shock Machine (24 page)

Larry: Soft: rug, pillow, hair, grass.
[Doug’s answer lights up]
Wrong. Seventy-five volts.
[Gives shock]

Doug: Ow.

Larry: Soft hair.
[Nervous laughter]
Cool:
[voice shaking slightly]
day, shade, water, cave.
[Answer lights up.]
Wrong. Ninety volts.
[Gives shock]

Doug: Ow!

Larry: Cool cave.
[Pause, before resuming with badly shaking voice]
Gold: dollar, necklace, moon, paint.
[Answer lights up.]
Right. Hard: stone, head, bread, work.
[Answer lights up.]
Wrong. One hundred and five volts.
[Gives shock]

Doug: Ow!

Larry: Hard head. Wet: night, grass, duck, cloth.
[Answer lights up.]
Wrong. One hundred and twenty volts.
[Gives shock]

Doug:
[long and drawn out]
Ow!!

Larry: Wet duck. Brave: woman, soldier, dog, horse.
[Answer lights up.]
Wrong. One hundred and thirty-five volts.
[Gives shock]

Doug: Aaah!

Larry: Brave woman. White: cloud, horse, rock, house.
[Answer lights up.]
Wrong.
[Gives shock]

Doug: Aah! Larry!

Larry: One hundred and fifty volts. . . . Should I stop?

Williams: No, continue please.

Larry: White horse. . . . Even if he doesn’t want to?

Williams: The experiment requires that you go on. Please continue.

Larry: Oh, boy.
[Pauses]
Sad: face, music, clown, girl.
[Answer lights up.]
Right. Short: sentence, movie, skirt, time.
[Answer lights up.]
Wrong. One hundred and sixty-five.
[Gives shock]

Doug: Ow! Hey, Larry, let’s stop it. I wanna get out of here, come on!

Williams:
[sensing Larry’s hesitation]
Continue, please.

Larry: Even though he’s against it?

Williams: Continue, please.

Doug: Hey, Lar?

Larry:
[calling out to Doug]
He told me to keep going!
[To Williams]
Even if it’s against his will?

Williams: Please continue, teacher. The experiment requires that you go on.

Larry: Oh, boy.
[Pause]
Short time. Sharp: axe, needle, stick, blade.
[Answer lights up.]
Wrong. One-eight-oh.
[Gives shock]

Doug: Ow! Hey, Larry, that’s too much!

Larry: Sharp needle.

Doug: Come on, let me out.

Larry: Slow—

Doug: Let me out of here, come on.

Larry:
[to Williams]
Look, I’m not going to do this against his will.

Doug: Get me out of here. Come on, Lar!

Larry: If he’s against it, I can’t do it.

Williams: The experiment requires that you continue.

Larry: Yeah, but if he’s against it I’m not going to continue. I mean, this guy’s in pain. I can’t do it.

Williams: As I said, the shocks may be painful, but they’re not dangerous.

Larry: Would you ask him if he wants to continue?

Williams: No, we can’t have any contact once we’ve started the test. We should avoid any talking, as a matter of fact. It’s absolutely essential that you continue.

Larry: All right. Slow: walk, dance, truck, music.
[Answer lights up.]
Wrong. One ninety-five.
[Gives shock]

Doug:
[yelling]
Ow, Lar, get me out of here, these straps. Come on!

Larry: Slow dance. Red . . . brick, rose, sunset, wagon.

Doug:
[shouting]
Come on, Lar, let’s stop this.

Larry: No, I’m not gonna continue, I’m sorry. You can have your money back. I’m not going to continue.

Williams: The money is not the issue, teacher.

Larry: No, I’m sorry.

Doug: Hey, Larry, get me out of these straps, I’m not foolin’. Let’s go. I’m serious.

Williams: The experiment requires that we continue, teacher.

Larry: Well, I’m disassociating myself from the experiment. I can’t go on like this.

Doug: Get me out of here!

Williams: It’s absolutely essential that you continue.

Larry: I’m sorry, I can’t.

Williams: You have no other choice, teacher.

Larry: Why? Why do I have no other choice? He is screaming; I can’t continue doing this. I have to face this guy.

Doug: Lar, come on!

Larry: I have to be with him. He’s my neighbor and I can’t go on with this.

Williams: If you don’t continue, we’ll have to discontinue the entire experiment.

Larry: May I speak to him?

Williams: Well, we’ll have to discontinue. No, you’re not allowed to have a conversation.

Larry: I can’t. I can’t go on.

Williams then took Larry through the usual set of questions about how he felt, but he also told him that Doug wasn’t really being shocked—they had been watching to see how far he would go in following orders. Williams drew the parallel with being in the army and reluctantly following orders from someone of higher rank. Milgram then entered and joined the conversation. Larry talked about his reactions.

Larry: I thought he had an awful lot of guts when I started going beyond here . . . when I got to 195 or something, I thought, God, it’s toasting him! I was so relieved when he started getting the right answers. I was shaking, I was nervous. He’s ordering me and I’m afraid to tell him to go to hell, you know. It’s important, I know—I’m working on my thesis. It’s important, but whee!

Milgram:
[to Williams]
You broke the news, didn’t you, that he wasn’t really being shocked?

Larry: Oh yeah, I was glad to hear it.
[Laughs]
Very glad. It’s a horrible feeling—this guy’s my neighbor. I was talking to this guy’s wife this afternoon; they’re expecting their third child. All of a sudden I realized I’ll be talking to him on the way home. I hope he’ll at least drive me home. It’s a long ride home.
[Laughs]

Doug was brought back into the lab.

Larry: Did he tell you anything when he put you in that chair? Did you know anything in that chair? When you were put in that chair, did you know anything about it?

Doug: Yeah.

Larry: You rat.

[Both laugh.]

Larry: Oh buddy! You’re in big—

Williams: He thought you really did—

Larry: I got very nervous.

Doug: How far did you get on this thing, Lar?

Larry: One ninety-five.

Williams took the leading role in the subsequent discussion, asking Larry and Doug how many people they thought might have continued to the maximum voltage. I could hear from their tone that Williams and Milgram were clearly proud of the research and excited by the results. But Larry wondered aloud how far he would have gone if it had been a stranger.

Doug: Lar, you wouldn’t have done it even if you didn’t know me.

Williams: Oh, I think he would have. I think Lar would have gone on.

Milgram: I don’t think so. I don’t know, I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t hear you, so—

Williams: We’ve done nine hundred people in this experiment. Nine hundred men roughly.

Milgram: Yeah.

Williams: That’s a lot of people to put through here. How many people out of a hundred, would you say—not knowing the guy
in the other room and hearing the screams—how many do you think out of a hundred would get to the end?

Doug: I think it depends a little on how effective the other end is.

Milgram: The screams are—

Williams: Less than half?

Larry: Sure. About 25 percent.

Williams: Sixty percent. How does that sound?

Larry: Would go to the end of that thing?

Doug: Would give a guy 450 volts?

Williams: On top of which, he’s not answering at 300 volts. And furthermore, he stops screaming at 330 volts.

Larry: And he keeps on going?

Williams: He sure does.

Milgram: They sure do.

Larry: And you couldn’t give an effective enough sales pitch to that guy to keep him from pushing those buttons.

Williams: I have set commands—I have three commands, I have four.

Larry: And they still go?

Milgram: One command he gives, the last one he gives, is “You have no other choice—you must go on.”

Larry: And the individual has stopped making any angry cries—

Williams: Right.

Larry: What do you hear?

Williams: Nothing. He doesn’t know if he’s—

Larry: Dead?

Williams: Dead.

Milgram: He says, “Consider no answer as equivalent to a wrong answer and continue.”

Williams: Same procedure as if it he got a wrong answer. So they give him the shock after that and he screams again, just like he’s right there, and he shouts, “I
told
you I didn’t want any more shocks,
let me out of here
,” and you can’t imagine.

Milgram: It’s taped. It’s bloodcurdling.

Larry: You got me worried now. How far do you think I would have gone?
[Laughs nervously]
It bothers me now.

Williams: Do you mean if it was somebody you didn’t know?

Doug: I don’t think you would have gone—

Milgram: Let him speak. Go ahead . . .

Larry was preoccupied with the fact that he didn’t stop earlier.

Larry: All I could think of was the whole complicated apparatus stopping now because I stopped . . . the whole nationwide testing maybe. He made it sound like a big deal and I thought, oh boy, I wonder if I would have really stopped. Chickenhearted I am, but how chickenhearted? How far would I go?

Milgram: People have different reasons, I think. Sometimes some people have a reason—for example, you’re working on your master’s, and working on an experiment, and you know an experiment may be valuable, and if it did stop something would be lost—

Larry: But how can I rationalize it in my own mind?

How could he rationalize it? Milgram didn’t give him an answer. He and Williams were clearly keen to wrap it up—they had another pair due to arrive in just a few minutes. Williams escorted Larry out of the room, and Doug was given a few moments to write about why he thought his friend had stopped when he did. Within a few minutes, both men had left the lab and Williams got on with business: “That was Subject 2425, Subject 2426 coming up.”
²

I couldn’t face listening to another one—I needed a break. I went outside for some fresh air, but the air was hot and heavy and I felt no cooler. I sat on a stone bench in the library’s small courtyard and tried to empty my mind. Larry’s agitation followed me outside. I imagined him afterward, left with questions about himself that no one could answer. Why had Milgram chosen to undertake such a risky and ethically problematic variation? Was that guilt I heard in his voice, in his hasty attempts to reassure Larry that he had a rational explanation for his behavior? And how did he, in the space of just a few minutes, get Doug to play along with the charade?

Back inside, to avoid listening to any more tapes, I went through the subject files of those who’d participated in condition 24. They were all men who had responded to a direct-mail invitation to take part—or at first I thought they had. Later I would discover that Milgram had phoned people whose names he got from other subjects because so few had responded to the letter. All twenty pairs took part in condition 24 over one week, between May 16 and 23, 1962. Three pairs were members of the same family—an uncle and a nephew, brothers-in-law, and a father and son, all of whom defied Williams.
³
The men in this condition all lived or worked in and around Bridgeport. One-third had parents born in Europe, and most of them worked in the manufacturing industry—two-thirds in unskilled or semiskilled jobs as machinists,
welders, assemblers, and toolmakers and the rest included teachers, firefighters, and policemen. Three men went all the way to 450 volts, and seventeen broke off despite Williams’s urging to continue. Each man had filled out a form, and while the names have been blacked out, their ages, marital status, and occupations are visible.

I wondered about those men. How did they feel when they realized that their friend or relative had been in cahoots with the experimenter? What was the conversation like in the car on the way home—between Larry and Doug, between father and son, between the friends who’d written that they’d grown up together, double-dated, and been each other’s best man? It was startling to hear the “victim” address the teacher by name: “Hey, Jerry! Get me out of here!”; “Ow! Tony! Stop!” It was the teacher to whom the learner appealed to rescue him from more pain. Now, looking back, McDonough’s cries—“Let me out! You can’t keep me here”—that I had heard so many times in earlier conditions seemed ambiguous and could just as easily have been directed at the experimenter. Had McDonough addressed his complaints to the teacher by name, would people have continued to give the shocks, I wondered? And if teachers had interpreted the learner’s cries as being directed at the experimenter, then it made sense that they would have reasoned that, if the experimenter made no move to respond, things couldn’t have been as bad as they seemed.