Chapter 6
AUTHORITY
Directed Deference
Follow an expert.
—VIRGILS
UPPOSE THAT WHILE LEAFING THROUGH THE NEWSPAPER, YOU notice
an ad for volunteers to take part in a “study of memory” being done
in the psychology department of a nearby university. Let’s suppose
further that, finding the idea of such an experiment intriguing, you
contact the director of the study, a Professor Stanley Milgram, and make
arrangements to participate in an hour-long session. When you arrive
at the laboratory suite, you meet two men. One is the researcher in
charge of the experiment, as is clearly evidenced by the gray lab coat
he wears and the clipboard he carries. The other is a volunteer like
yourself who seems average in all respects.
After initial greetings and pleasantries are exchanged, the researcher
begins to explain the procedures to be followed. He says that the exper-
iment is a study of how punishment affects learning and memory.
Therefore, one participant will have the task of learning pairs of words
in a long list until each pair can be recalled perfectly; this person is to
be called the Learner. The other partici-pant’s job will be to test the
Learner’s memory and to deliver increasingly strong electric shocks for
every mistake; this person will be designated the Teacher.
Naturally, you get a bit nervous at this news. And your apprehension
increases when, after drawing lots with your partner, you find that you
are assigned the Learner role. You hadn’t expected the possibility of
pain as part of the study, so you briefly consider leaving. But no, you