Chapter 1 - The Dilemma of Obedience
This chapter introduces the book and talks about obedience and how it is an important aspect of social life. The author describes the experiment in some detail, the motives behind conducting the experiment, and a brief description of some of the results. This chapter is boring at first because it does not go into details of the experiment, but it does a good job of introducing the reader to the experiment.
Chapter 2 - Method of Inquiry
In this chapter, the author goes into more detail about each step for setting up the experiment. He talks about the participants, the recruitment process, the characteristics of the participants (age, race, occupation, etc.), description of the learning task, the actual setup of the experiment, and detailed descriptions of the shocking procedure and the machines. This chapter was a little better than the first because it started to build anxiety and a wanting to see what the experiment would yield.
Chapter 3 - Expected Behavior
Stanley Milgram gathered groups of psychiatrists, college students, and middle-class adults and explained the experiment to them, leaving out that the learner was an actor. He asked them to predict the results of the experiment and most of them predicted that subjects would not go through the whole experiment and stop when the learner asked to be let out. This chapter was interesting because it showed how people thought they would react and eventually showed different results than what the experiment yielded.
Chapter 4 - Closeness of the Victim
Obedience depended on the proximity of the victim to the learner. If the learner was out of sight or farther away, the subject was more likely to continue through to the end of the experiment. If the learner was in the same room as the victim, disobedience was more likely to occur. It was interesting to see how face-to-face and remote confrontations could produce such different results. However, it does make sense and is something I have personally experienced. I have texted someone to avoid a face-to-face confrontation with them.
Chapter 5 - Individuals Confront Authority
Some accounts are given of people that participated in the experiment and Milgram discusses some of the forces (background, subject-experimenter interaction,etc.) that affect the way a subject responds. He puts some of the actual verbal exchanges between the experimenter and the subject in the chapter which made for a good read. It was kind of cool to see how the victim interacted with the experimenter.
Chapter 6 - Further Variation and Controls
Changes are made to the original experiment are described in this chapter. Some of the experiment changes were: adding a heart condition to the learner, changing personnel, changing the proximity of the experimenter to the subject, the impact of women, emphasizing the contract of the subject, the impact of the institution, and the option of the subject choosing the shock to administer. I liked this chapter because it showed that the author thought about every possible scenario and made an experiment that would reflect that type of scenario.
Chapter 7 - Individuals Confront Authority II
This chapter was pretty much a continuation of chapter 5 except with accounts from different people. I liked this chapter because I liked to read the conversations the subjects would have with the experimenter. Elinor Rosenblum pissed me off though. She kept on going on about how she ws the most marvelous person and painting herself to be the nicest person in the world. If you're so nice, then why did you do shock the crap out of the person. She reminds me of the Lori in the walking dead; annoying.
Chapter 8 - Role Permutations
The role of the individual was tested to see whether it played an important role in affecting the responses of the subject. Experiments 12-16 reflected the role permutations and they showed that a hierarchy of authority is crucial when choosing an authority to follow. For example, you wouldn't follow someone off the street in a laboratory environment, but you might follow someone perceived to be a scientist.
Chapter 9 - Group Effects
In this chapter, obedience is differentiated from conformity. Obedience comes from an hierarchical authority and the person will say they performed an act because they were just following orders. Conformity comes from following what a group of peers does. Stanley Milgram performs some experiments using these two entities. I thought this was interesting, too, because I do notice that one person in a group usually goes along with what a group will say instead of stating his/her own thought.
Chapter 10 - Why Obedience?
Around this chapter is when the book started to get boring for me. The author begins to discuss some of the reasons why obedience occurs, hierarchical models and their effect on obedience, and agentic shift. This chapter was still kind of interesting but it seemed like he began to bring up the same argument over and over and I got tired of reading it.
Chapter 11 - The Process of Obedience
Again, the author talks about agentic state, although a little more in depth, and explains antecedent conditions, binding factors, and consequences. Some antecedent conditions discussed were family, institutional setting, and rewards; binding factors keep individuals in the agentic state. This chapter was also boring to me because it kept going on and on about stuff in the previous chapter.
Chapter 12 - Strain and Disobedience
Strains and strain-resolving were discussed and how they influence a subject to obey/disobey. When the binding factors are greater than the net strain, obedience occurs; if the binding factors are less than the net strain, the result is disobedience. The author goes on to talk about strain, its sources, and strain resolution. Other than reading the account of the experimenter and the subject, chapter was pretty boring.
Chapter 13 - An Alternative Theory: Is Aggression the Key?
Stanley Milgram discusses the theory of aggression in the shocking experiment which says that the subject wanted to hurt the learner out of frustration/anger. I liked this chapter because it talked about an interesting aspect of the mind. Some people are just angry, so I figured getting aggressive people in an experiment would increase obedience, however, when given the subject was given freedom to use whatever shock level, they remained low. In a psychology class I am taking, we are discussing aggression so this chapter really interested me.
Chapter 14 - Problems of Method
Another boring chapter. The author answers 3 questions from critics of the experiment. He dismisses opposing views and restates his point; the 3 questions were: (1) Did the subjects correctly represent society at large, (2) did they believe the shocks were real from the start, and (3) Can you generalize the results and apply them to real life experiences?
Chapter 15 - Epilogue
This chapter was very cool because it had a Q and A session between a Vietnam soldier and Mike Wallace of CBS news. It was interesting to hear about what he did and why he did it, although what he did was terrible. It gives some insight as to what his mindset was at the time (none; just listen to authority) and how he felt at the time. The accounts of the subjects in the book along with this interview were by far the most interesting of the book followed by the results of the experiment(s).
Summary/Reaction
Overall, Obedience to Authority was a good read. It was very interesting because it showed the nature of human's and how saying how you react to something doesn't always translate. You can never know how you will react until you are put into the actual situation, as the shock experiment demonstrated. I liked reading how the dialogue between the experimenter and the subjects during the experiment. It showed what they felt, what they were thinking, and showed how they were sometimes caught in conflict with their conscience and authority. A lot of the reasons the author gives for obedience to authority make sense because there have been times where I have felt I was in a similar (but not hurtful) situation but followed through with instructions because of the figure of authority. This was a good idea for an experiment and all the variations of the experiment shed light as to what type of scenarios generate higher obedience. From the class readings, so far, Obedience to Authority is my favorite just because of the content of the book and how it relates to life.
