Replicating Milgram: A Commentary

Commentary on the Replicating Milgram
Marty Ian Gideon Flores
Faculty, Department of Psychology
Urdaneta City University

Title: Replicating Milgram: Would People Still Obey Today?
Author: Jerry Burger, Santa Clara University
Published in: American Psychologist, Vol. 64, No. 1, 1-11
Year Published: 2009

Statement of the Problem
Jerry Burger posed the question: "Would people still obey today?" as his primary or main problem in conducting the replication study which made Stanley Milgram (1933-1984) famous not only in the field of psychology but also to other social sciences fields such as political science, and sociology. Burger was intrigued whether people nowadays, "learned to 'question authority' as they took part in the Civil Rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement (Aronson et al., 2010)," were less complacent and accepting than people lived 45 years ago. This not only motivated him to pursue the seemingly impossible replication study due to the more stringent observance of ethical standards the Institutional Review Board (IRB) is imposing—during Milgram's time IRB and the ethical standards were neither created nor observed, Burger also asked the following questions: (a) How much norm information is sufficient to overcome the forces pushing participants toward obedience; (b) Is there a difference in obedience level and gender; (c) What could be the personalities of the participants—those who continued to execute the experiment, and those who refused to continue the experiment?
The questions posed by the researcher were timely because "discussion and debate about how to interpret the ndings (from the study) have never ended (Burger, 2009)," and that, he hoped that such replication and thorough analysis of the phenomena could shed light for deeper understanding of "obedience and conformity" in a social psychological perspective. While reading the whole article, I noted that the problem/s posted by Burger for his study had the following characteristics: "(a) is grounded in a theoretical framework; (b) is built on, but also offers something new to, previous research; (c) addresses directly or indirectly some real problem in the world; (d) clearly states the variables or constructs to be examined; (d) is not biased in terminology or position; (e) has multiple possible answers; and (f) is simple, or at least manageable (from web.cortland.edu/shis/651/GoodRQQualities.pdf)."

Methodology:
Participants:
"Individuals who responded to advertisements and yers went through a series of screening procedures (Burger, 2009)." This sampling method was also used by Stanley Milgram during the 1960's for the selection of his participants for his infamous experiments.

Procedure:
Recruitment and Screening:
Interested applicants had undergone a two-pronged screening process which is a new twist for the study—not present from the original Milgram study. The screening procedure was undertaken because, as Miller (2009) put, it: "the screening procedure has both methodological and ethical dimensions. One requirement was to find participants unfamiliar with the Milgram studies in order to avoid suspicion of the deceptions involved, the possible meaning of their behavior, and so forth. Another goal was to exclude participants who would be likely to react in an unacceptably emotional way to the experiment. This objective amounted to an extensive clinical assessment involving a series of stress-relevant questions as well as personal interviews with each prospective participant." Thus, the two-pronged recruitment and screening process were presented below (source from www.ThePsychFiles.com):

First Phase
Questionnaires: Six questions (created by 2 clinical psychologists) were asked of potential participants. Examples: (a) "Have you ever been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder?; (b) Are you currently receiving psychotherapy?; and (c) Are you currently taking any medications for emotional difficulties such as anxiety or depression?. Answer 'yes' to any question - you were excluded from the study.

Second Phase
Four scales: Those who made it through the above questions were then given the following scales to fill out: (a) Interpersonal Reactivity Index (extent to which you experience empathy for others - might you be less likely to obey?); (b) Beck Anxiety Inventory; (c) Desirability of Control Scale (extent to which you like to "exercise control and to make their own decisions" - might these people be less likely to obey?); and (d) Beck Depression Inventory.

Final Phase
Interviews: Questionnaires filled out in step 1 were given to a licensed clinical psychologist, who conducted an interview with the subjects (average: 30 minutes). "Of the 123 people who participated in this second screening process, 47 (38.2%) were excluded from the study by the clinical psychologist (Burger, 2009). Moreover, the remaining 76 participants were scheduled for a second on-campus session, typically held about a week after the clinical interview. Six of these participants were dropped from the study (Burger, 2009).

Base Condition
The base condition or the laboratory/experimental condition set-up in Santa Clara University was pretty much the same as the one Milgram had nearly half-decade ago in Yale University. The following were observed during the conduct of the study (source: www.ThePsychFiles.com) : (a) Rigged drawing to determine "learner" and "teacher"; (b) Confederate gets strapped into a chair with electrodes attached, etc. "Learner" explains that he had a "slight heart condition"; (c) "Teacher" is sat down in front of the "shock machine" and given 25 word pairs (ex: "strong-arm") and is; (d) Pre-recorded sounds were played at pre-determined shock switches (ex: grunts); (e) 150 volt level: "Ugh. 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."; (f) The "experimenter" gave the same prods as in the Milgram study:
"Please go on" or "Please continue"
The experiment requires that you continue"
It is absolutely essential that you continue"
You have no other choice, you must continue"
(g) The experiment ended when either:
The teacher refused to continue
The teacher read the next item on the list of word pairs after having pressed the 150 volt switch (a behavior which would indicate that the subject would probably continue asking questions and shocking the learner and, in Burger's estimation, would have continued all the way to 450 volts)
(h) An immediate debriefing occurred

Modeled Refusal Condition
The following were the steps observed during the second condition plotted for the experiment (source: www.ThePsychFiles.com): (a) Same basic setup as in condition 1 except:; (b) Two people would act as teachers: the real subject and, unknown to the real subject, a confederate of the experimenter who would also act as a teacher; (c) This "second teacher" was always chosen as "teacher 1" and he or she would begin asking the questions and administering the "shocks" while "teacher 2" (the real subject) watched; (d) After hearing the "ugh" sound when the 75 volt switch was pressed, the teacher/confederate said, "I don't know about this". The experimenter replied, "Please continue". The teacher/confederate said, "I don't think I can do this" and pushed his chair away from the shock machine; (e) The experimenter asked the real subject to pick up where teacher 1 had left off; and (f) The teacher/confederate sat quietly during the rest of the study, avoiding eye contact with the real subject.

Ethical Considerations
We have known that the experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram posted some ethical issues which left many social psychologists a hard time obtaining an IRB approval for replication. According to Elms (2009), criticism of the ethics of the Milgram studies has focused on two broad issues: the amount of deception used by the experimenters and the emotional stress generated in participants. Elms, being one of the witnesses of Milgram's works had questioned how Burger obtained such approval after many attempts of other social psychologists to replicate it but had failed. In so doing, Burger (2009) discussed in his article the following ethical considerations he has made which the IRB judged as something acceptable and worth pursuing:
The 150-Volt Solution. In analyzing the videos of the experiment, Burger and his students found out that 150-volt switch is "the critical moment in the procedure." He further expounded this claim that their "observation suggests a solution to the ethical concerns about replicating Milgram's research. Knowing how people respond up to and including the 150-volt point in the procedure allows one to make a reasonable estimate of what they would do if allowed to continue to the end. Stopping the study within seconds after participants decide what to do at this juncture would also avoid exposing them to the intense stress Milgram's participants often experienced in the subsequent parts of the procedure."

Additional Safeguards. Burger, drawing from the critics of the Milgram experiment, stressed that additional safeguards were observed to ensure that the "participants were treated in a humane and ethical manner (Burger, 2009)" during the replication studies. He discussed them in his article and hereby summarized as follows: (a) the two-step screening process; (b) obtaining consent specifying the rights of the participants; (c) had the participants experience a very minimal shock of 15 volts compared to Milgram's 45 volts in order to make full impression on the deception with the participant's consent of course; (d) debriefing took place right after the experiment ended showing the confederate that he was fine and nothing harmful had happened to him during the experiment; and (e) "the experimenter who ran the study also was a clinical psychologist who was instructed to end the study immediately if he saw any signs of excessive stress (Burger, 2009)."

Explaining the Effects
"What caused Milgram's participants to act in such unexpected ways (Burger, 2009)?" Burger provided us and even described "four features of the situation that likely contributed to the high rates of obedience." The four features are as follows: (a) obedience to authority—"people follow an authority gure's commands when that person's authority is seen as legitimate"; (b) gradual increase in demands—"gradual increase in the size of demands is an effective tactic for changing attitudes and behavior"; (c) limited sources of information in a novel situation—"once participants realized the difficult position they had gotten themselves into, they began an immediate search for information about how they ought to respond"; and (d) responsibility not assigned or diffused—absence of responsibility has often been cited by psychologists as a contributing factor to aggressive and abhorrent."

Findings:
Would people still obey today like those people five decades ago? Burger (2009) found out that in the: (a) "base condition, 70% had to be stopped after administering the 150 volts (prediction: they would have gone on to 450 volts); (b) modeled Refusal Condition: 63% had to be stopped after administering the 150 volts; (c) no statistical difference between the two conditions (this is contrary to Burger's prediction that modeled refusal would decrease obedience); (d) no statistical difference between men and women, and either no or minor effects for desirability for control or empathy; and (e) no statistical difference between Burger's Base condition and the similar condition in Milgram's study.
Conclusions:
After the conduct of the replication study, Burger came up with the following conclusions (source: www.ThePsychFiles.com):
"My partial replication of Milgram's procedure suggests that average Americans react to this laboratory situation today much the same way they did 45 years ago….the same situational factors that affected obedience in Milgram's participants still operate today." - p. 8
"I cannot say with absolute certainty that the present participants would have continued to the end of the shock generator's range at a rate similar to Milgram's participants…. however, numerous studies have demonstrated the effect of incrementally larger requests." - p. 8
"I interpret this high rate of obedience …as a demonstration of the power of …situational forces…" - p. 9

Recommendation:
Burger (2009) recommended that: "Since Milgram's studies, concern for the well-being of participants has limted research on obedience to authority. I hope future investigators will utilize the 150-volt procedure presented here to address the weighty questions that motivated Stanley Milgram nearly half a century ago."

Commentary:
The Stanley Milgram experiments on obedience were one of the so-called classic studies that popularize the field social psychology. With its reputation, many psychologists and social scientists tried their luck in gaining the approval of local and national IRB to replicate the experiments. For almost five decades, since the experiments were first executed only one has had able to achieve the IRB's approval—Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University in California, USA.
Burger tried to examine if there is a difference between the levels of obedience 45 years ago and that of the present, given the many historical, political, social, technological, and psychological milestones that had happen: Would people still obey today? Likewise, he posted another three hypothesis that (a) that seeing at least one person refuse to continue the task diminishes one's obedience; (b) there are no gender differences in the level of obedience; (c) levels of obedience does not differ since Milgram's time and today. The problems or hypotheses—according to Rathus (2014), research problems or questions can be reworded as hypotheses, achieved the basic characteristics of a well-framed research questions. Moreover, his problems were timely given the fact that many has changed since 1960's.
In so doing, right after he framed the problems, he sought the approval of the IRB by exquisitely engineering and re-engineering of some of the procedures from the original Milgram's standards to be executed for the experiments. According to one critic of the replication study conducted by Burger, Elms (2009)—who was one of the graduate students in Yale that had solely worked with Milgram during the conduct of the experiments, asked the following questions in relation to the publicized replication (source: Elms, 2009): (a) how did Burger get his research approved by the IRB at a respectable American university?; (b) to what degree was he be able to replicate the Milgram experiments?; and (c) would people still obey today?. The first two questions scrutinize the method Burger used in his study, while the last question dealt with the validity of the study's findings. Let's have those questions one by one.
How did Burger get his research approved by the IRB? Burger, as I stated above, made considerable revisions on the procedures in experimentation so as not to inflict harm to the participants and that they "were treated in a humane and ethical manner (Burger, 2009)." Thus, with the major revisions in order to get the IRB's approval, Elms (2009) described the replication as "obedience lite."
To what degree was he be able to replicate the Milgram experiment? Comparing the two articles published by Milgram in 1963 (Behavioral Study of Obedience published in Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology) and Burger in 2009 (see details above); it can be observed the wide differences between them. Illuminating what was Elm's (2009) wrote: "Burger appears to have misunderstood either the nature of Milgram's research or the de ning characteristics of experimental social psychology." Because of his overly concern towards the IRB's approval he had forgot that: (a) there was actually a direct impact on the data one could gather in screening participants—which is not present on the original study; (b) a 15-volt shock versus the original 45-volt shock being tested to the participants are extraneous variables; and (c) stopping at 150-volts "would presumably result to the loss of little (but significant) behavioral data while sparing participants the stress of continuing (Elms, 2009). Therefore, according to Elms (2009), it purges the most distinctive features from Milgram's basic research design and greatly diminishes the replication's generalizability to any real-world issues."
Would people still obey today? As discussed above, we can glean that the results or the findings of the study was clouded by some ethical considerations for the sake of IRB's approval. In this sense, Elms (2009) wrote: "several factors complicate or weaken any direct comparison between Burger's (2009) percentages of obedient participants and Milgram's." First among these factors were the screening procedure Burger introduced which was not present in the original study. Burger screened participants who: (a) "are familiar with the Milgram's experiment; and (b) might have negative reaction to the experience (Burger, 2009)." Clearly, by doing this, Burger somehow manipulated the result of the replication because it diminished if not totally wiped-out the number of disobedient participants. In the words of Elms (2009), participants who were excluded in the study "might add up to the number or percentage of disobedients." Likewise, the 15-volt shock poses less distressing condition to the participants than the original 45-volt leading "them to assume that the shock generator was not really that shocking (Elms, 2009)" and could continue administering the shock up to and beyond, if and only if the shock generator have buttons higher than, 150 volts. Such mentality affects greatly the data clouding the conclusion Burger had—participants of the study were "considerably more obedient on average (Elms, 2009), than those of Milgrams.
Finally, Miller (2009) wrote:
Stanley Milgram once told me that a major source of his regret was that the obedience research had stimulated so much ethical and methodological lcontroversy rather than substantive research on obedience itself. He would thus, I think, be very enthusiastic regarding Burger's (2009) approach but probably dismayed at what he would regard as overly restrictive ethical guidelines. In terms of these guidelines and IRB approval, things are very different for social psychological research today than in decades past. Sacrificing the welfare of research participants in the pursuit of vital knowledge on unpleasant behaviors is, of course, controversial (at best) and possibly very dangerous. For good reasons, researchers cannot be put in charge of evaluating the ethics of their own procedures. On the other hand, knowledge about the destructive capacities of human beings always remains sorely needed. In the context of these values and concerns, Burger's new study represents, I think, an impressive effort to fill a very serious void. He has provided a pointed reminder that even (indeed especially) for the Milgram study (and other studies as well), psychologists must not simply settle for "Do No Research" as another ethical guideline.

References:
Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., & Akert, R. M. (2010). Social Psychology (7th Ed.). NJ: Prentice Hall.
Burger, J.M. (2009). Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today? American Psychologist, 64, 1–11.
Elms, A.C. (2009). Obedience Lite. American Psychologist, 64, 32-36.
Miller, A.G. (2009). Reflections on "Replicating Milgram" (Burger, 2009). American Psychologist, 64, 20-27.
Myers, D.G. (2010). Social Psychology (10th Ed.). NY: McGraw-Hill Companies.
Rathus, S.A. (2014). Psychology (3rd Ed.). SG: Cengange Learning.

Other resources:
www.ThePsychFiles.com. Powerpoint on the Milgram and Burger Studies. Retrieved July 8, 2015.
web.cortland.edu/shis/651/GoodRQQualities.pdf. PDF on Common Characteristics of Good Research Problems. Retrieved July 8, 2015.
Marty Ian Gideon Flores PsychDept: UCU