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In 1961, a young psychologist named Stanley Milgram tried to understand what he considered one of the most pressing questions of his time. Born to Jewish parents and deeply influenced by the fears of World War II, Milgram designed an experiment at Yale University, revealing a particular German sensibility to the authority he had to exist. I was hoping to do that.
What he discovered in the lab in New Haven would shake him to his heart – not because it revealed something unique about German psychology, but it was a man far closer to home. Because it revealed something universal about the nature of
The experiment was seemingly simple. Participants are said to support research on learning. Memorythey will act as “teachers” who manage electric shock to “learners” when they make a mistake. The learners were actually actors and the shock was not real, but the participants didn’t know this. As the expected voltage increased and the actor screamed in obvious pain, the white coated authority figure simply instructed the participants to continue.
Milgram had expected that only a small percentage of Americans would fully comply with these cruel instructions. He was wrong. 65% of participants continued to administer the shock all the way to the maximum voltage, even if they heard screams of suffering and pleasing. The participants were not sadists. They were ordinary Americans of all life. They expressed extreme pain anxiety When still instructed by the authority figures on continuity, they did so anyway.
Milgram did not need to travel to Germany to study authoritarianism. He found its psychological foundation in Connecticut in the throbbing of American democracy. The mirror he lifted was not German exceptionalism, but rather human universality. Even if it contradicts our moral compass, it is our deeper tendency to sit.
This lesson resonates with unforgettable connections in America today. Millions of fellow citizens demand loyalty over truth, attack democratic institutions, and willing to follow authoritarian leaders who dehumanize those they define as “others.” We see what is shown in real time. Like Milgram participants, many express discomfort with certain actions or statements, but continue to comply and support when directed by someone with authority that is accepted as legal.
The pattern on which the milgram is recorded is played every day: a leader People who make obviously false claims about election fraud and know a better nod. The basic institutions of democracy are being attacked, and those who once defended them are silent. Cruel policies are enacted against vulnerable groups and citizens who view themselves as moral. The voltage dialing gets higher and higher, but it continues.
What Milgram has shown us is that this compliance does not require evil intentions or even agreement with the authorities. the goal. It simply requires the correct psychological conditions: a system that spreads perceived authority figures, gradual escalations of requests, and individual responsibility. Does it sound familiar? These are exactly the conditions under which the authoritarian movement is excellent at creating.
The horrifying meaning of Milgram’s work is not that Americans are particularly susceptible to authoritarianism. That means that despite our democratic traditions and ideals of individual freedom, we are as susceptible to others. The very fact that Milgram discovered these results in New Haven, not Nuremberg, is not related to America’s current predicament, and nothing more.
But if Milgram’s discoveries are warnings, they are also a call to action. Understanding our psychological vulnerabilities is the first step to protecting them. His research shows that resistance to malicious authority is possible. After all, some participants refused to continue in the face of pressure. Resisting people often did so by actively denialing the rights of authorities to demand unethical behavior.
These are the psychological resources we must cultivate to resist today’s authoritarian appeal. It is a fierce sense of individual moral responsibility, skepticism towards authority figures who demand blind loyalty, and an unwavering recognition of shared humanity across political and social divisions.
Milgram did not reach Germany to study the psychological aftermath of the Third Reich. Instead, he discovered something much more important in New Haven. We discovered warnings about the vulnerability of democratic values in the face of authority and lessons about the constant vigilance needed to maintain them. As America tackles its own authoritarian temptation, we hope he remembers what he finds at that Yale Institute. The ability to obedience to malicious authority lies in the human mind itself, not in some distant “others.” The voltage dial is rotating. The problem is to hold the button down.
