RB 9/26

“That is the triumph of advertising in the culture industry: the compulsive imitation by consumers of cultural commodities which, at the same time, they recognize as false.”—Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno

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What would I have done if I were in the Milgram Experiment? According to the experiment’s results, the chances are I would have applied enough electricity to the learner to murder him, despite hearing his screams and subsequent deathly silence as I increased the voltage. I would have questioned the ethical nature of what I was doing. But the experimenters would have encouraged me to continue, and this probably would have been enough to keep me going. My motivation would have been compliance.

The Milgram Experiment was conducted by Stanley Milgram at Yale between 1961 and 1962. Nazi Lt. Colonel Adolf Eichmann had just gone on trial for crimes against humanity, and Milgram, baffled by the large number of people who participated as soldiers in the Holocaust, sought to study obedience to authority.

Subjects were told to ask a learner a series of questions and to shock him when he answered incorrectly. The learner, actually a Milgram assistant, sat behind a wall, out of the subject’s view. The learner answered each question incorrectly, and the shock voltage was increased. The learner screamed and complained of a heart condition and eventually went silent. The subject was encouraged to keep shocking, despite the fact the learner was no longer answering. When a subject questioned the directions, he was given a scripted response.

First response: “Please continue.”
Second response: “The experiment requires you to continue. Please go on.”
Third response: “It is essential that you continue.”
Fourth response: “You have no choice. You must continue.”

The fifth time a subject questioned the directions, the experiment was stopped. Over sixty percent of the subjects, however, didn’t make it to the fifth response, and, instead, administered the shocks until they were told the experiment was complete.

This phenomenon of compliance despite evidence of destructive consequences is evident in “compulsive imitation by consumers of cultural commodities which, at the same time, they recognize as false” (Horkheimer and Adorno). In our culture, compulsive imitation of cultural commodities results in things like anorexia and depression, sweatshops and corporate fat cats, global warming and war.

So again I ask myself, what would I have done if I were in the Milgram Experiment? According to my credit card transaction history, the chances are I would have applied enough electricity to the learner to murder him, despite hearing his screams and subsequent deathly silence as I increased the voltage.