Milgram's Obedience: How Far Will We Go Under Authority?
Yale 1961 — 65% complied with lethal-dose shock orders
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Eichmann's Shadow
In April 1961, the trial of Adolf Eichmann commenced in Jerusalem. Eichmann was the administrator responsible for the systematic murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust. However, in the courtroom, he did not present himself as a "monster" but rather as a seemingly ordinary bureaucrat. This observation led Hannah Arendt to coin the phrase "the banality of evil." In August of that same year, Stanley Milgram, a newly appointed assistant professor at Yale University, placed an advertisement. It sought participants for a "Study of Memory and Learning," offering $4.50 for one hour of their time.
One in Two Went to the End
The "student" in the experiment was actually an actor, and the electric shocks were fake. However, the "teacher" participant was unaware of this deception. At 75 volts, the student began to groan; at 150 volts, they cried out, "My heart!"; at 300 volts, they screamed; and from 330 volts onward, they fell silent. The experimenter, dressed in a white lab coat, calmly instructed, "Please continue. It is essential for the experiment." Remarkably, 26 out of 40 participants (65%) administered the full 450-volt shock, the highest level. Previously, psychiatrists had predicted that only 0.1% of people would go this far. This starkly revealed how little humans understand their own capacity for obedience.
Obedience in the AI Era
Milgram's experiment became ethically unfeasible to conduct after the 1960s. However, a 2009 replication by Jerry Burger at Santa Clara University, which only went up to 150 volts, yielded nearly identical rates of obedience. This suggests that the mechanism of authority leading to obedience remains a fundamental aspect of human behavior. In the 21st century, a new question arises with the advent of artificial intelligence: to what extent do we obey algorithms? From recommendation systems and AI-powered interview tools to autonomous weapons, the questions Milgram posed decades ago have taken on a profound new weight.
The Character for Obedience
The Chinese character "從" (jong), meaning "to follow," visually combines two people (人) moving one after another with the radical for foot (止). This character embodies the act of following. However, the Confucian Analects state, "君君臣臣父父子子" – "Let the ruler be a ruler, the subject a subject, the father a father, and the son a son." This teaching implies that true authority derives from moral legitimacy and proper conduct. To follow merely because of a white lab coat, without questioning the authority's moral standing, is not "從" but "盲從" (maengjong), or blind obedience. Genuine "從" involves first discerning if one is truly qualified to be followed, and then choosing to follow.
