psychology behind social experiment

Social Psychology Experiments: 10 Of The Most Famous Studies

Ten of the most influential social psychology experiments explain why we sometimes do dumb or irrational things. 

Ten of the most influential social psychology experiments explain why we sometimes do dumb or irrational things.

“I have been primarily interested in how and why ordinary people do unusual things, things that seem alien to their natures. Why do good people sometimes act evil? Why do smart people sometimes do dumb or irrational things?” –Philip Zimbardo

Like famous social psychologist Professor Philip Zimbardo (author of The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil ), I’m also obsessed with why we do dumb or irrational things.

The answer quite often is because of other people — something social psychologists have comprehensively shown.

Each of the 10 brilliant social psychology experiments below tells a unique, insightful story relevant to all our lives, every day.

Click the link in each social psychology experiment to get the full description and explanation of each phenomenon.

1. Social Psychology Experiments: The Halo Effect

The halo effect is a finding from a famous social psychology experiment.

It is the idea that global evaluations about a person (e.g. she is likeable) bleed over into judgements about their specific traits (e.g. she is intelligent).

It is sometimes called the “what is beautiful is good” principle, or the “physical attractiveness stereotype”.

It is called the halo effect because a halo was often used in religious art to show that a person is good.

2. Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort people feel when trying to hold two conflicting beliefs in their mind.

People resolve this discomfort by changing their thoughts to align with one of conflicting beliefs and rejecting the other.

The study provides a central insight into the stories we tell ourselves about why we think and behave the way we do.

3. Robbers Cave Experiment: How Group Conflicts Develop

The Robbers Cave experiment was a famous social psychology experiment on how prejudice and conflict emerged between two group of boys.

It shows how groups naturally develop their own cultures, status structures and boundaries — and then come into conflict with each other.

For example, each country has its own culture, its government, legal system and it draws boundaries to differentiate itself from neighbouring countries.

One of the reasons the became so famous is that it appeared to show how groups could be reconciled, how peace could flourish.

The key was the focus on superordinate goals, those stretching beyond the boundaries of the group itself.

4. Social Psychology Experiments: The Stanford Prison Experiment

The Stanford prison experiment was run to find out how people would react to being made a prisoner or prison guard.

The psychologist Philip Zimbardo, who led the Stanford prison experiment, thought ordinary, healthy people would come to behave cruelly, like prison guards, if they were put in that situation, even if it was against their personality.

It has since become a classic social psychology experiment, studied by generations of students and recently coming under a lot of criticism.

5. The Milgram Social Psychology Experiment

The Milgram experiment , led by the well-known psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s, aimed to test people’s obedience to authority.

The results of Milgram’s social psychology experiment, sometimes known as the Milgram obedience study, continue to be both thought-provoking and controversial.

The Milgram experiment discovered people are much more obedient than you might imagine.

Fully 63 percent of the participants continued administering what appeared like electric shocks to another person while they screamed in agony, begged to stop and eventually fell silent — just because they were told to.

6. The False Consensus Effect

The false consensus effect is a famous social psychological finding that people tend to assume that others agree with them.

It could apply to opinions, values, beliefs or behaviours, but people assume others think and act in the same way as they do.

It is hard for many people to believe the false consensus effect exists because they quite naturally believe they are good ‘intuitive psychologists’, thinking it is relatively easy to predict other people’s attitudes and behaviours.

In reality, people show a number of predictable biases, such as the false consensus effect, when estimating other people’s behaviour and its causes.

7. Social Psychology Experiments: Social Identity Theory

Social identity theory helps to explain why people’s behaviour in groups is fascinating and sometimes disturbing.

People gain part of their self from the groups they belong to and that is at the heart of social identity theory.

The famous theory explains why as soon as humans are bunched together in groups we start to do odd things: copy other members of our group, favour members of own group over others, look for a leader to worship and fight other groups.

8. Negotiation: 2 Psychological Strategies That Matter Most

Negotiation is one of those activities we often engage in without quite realising it.

Negotiation doesn’t just happen in the boardroom, or when we ask our boss for a raise or down at the market, it happens every time we want to reach an agreement with someone.

In a classic, award-winning series of social psychology experiments, Morgan Deutsch and Robert Krauss investigated two central factors in negotiation: how we communicate with each other and how we use threats.

9. Bystander Effect And The Diffusion Of Responsibility

The bystander effect in social psychology is the surprising finding that the mere presence of other people inhibits our own helping behaviours in an emergency.

The bystander effect social psychology experiments are mentioned in every psychology textbook and often dubbed ‘seminal’.

This famous social psychology experiment on the bystander effect was inspired by the highly publicised murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964.

It found that in some circumstances, the presence of others inhibits people’s helping behaviours — partly because of a phenomenon called diffusion of responsibility.

10. Asch Conformity Experiment: The Power Of Social Pressure

The Asch conformity experiments — some of the most famous every done — were a series of social psychology experiments carried out by noted psychologist Solomon Asch.

The Asch conformity experiment reveals how strongly a person’s opinions are affected by people around them.

In fact, the Asch conformity experiment shows that many of us will deny our own senses just to conform with others.

Author: Dr Jeremy Dean

Psychologist, Jeremy Dean, PhD is the founder and author of PsyBlog. He holds a doctorate in psychology from University College London and two other advanced degrees in psychology. He has been writing about scientific research on PsyBlog since 2004. View all posts by Dr Jeremy Dean

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The Most Famous Social Psychology Experiments Ever Performed

Social experiments often seek to answer questions about how people behave in groups or how the presence of others impacts individual behavior. Over the years, social psychologists have explored these questions by conducting experiments .

The results of some of the most famous social psychology experiments remain relevant (and often quite controversial) today. Such experiments give us valuable information about human behavior and how group influence can impact our actions in social situations.

At a Glance

Some of the most famous social psychology experiments include Asch's conformity experiments, Bandura's Bobo doll experiments, the Stanford prison experiment, and Milgram's obedience experiments. Some of these studies are quite controversial for various reasons, including how they were conducted, serious ethical concerns, and what their results suggested.

The Asch Conformity Experiments

What do you do when you know you're right but the rest of the group disagrees with you? Do you bow to group pressure?

In a series of famous experiments conducted during the 1950s, psychologist Solomon Asch demonstrated that people would give the wrong answer on a test to fit in with the rest of the group.

In Asch's famous conformity experiments , people were shown a line and then asked to select a line of a matching length from a group of three. Asch also placed confederates in the group who would intentionally choose the wrong lines.

The results revealed that when other people picked the wrong line, participants were likely to conform and give the same answers as the rest of the group.

What the Results Revealed

While we might like to believe that we would resist group pressure (especially when we know the group is wrong), Asch's results revealed that people are surprisingly susceptible to conformity .

Not only did Asch's experiment teach us a great deal about the power of conformity, but it also inspired a whole host of additional research on how people conform and obey, including Milgram's infamous obedience experiments.

The Bobo Doll Experiment

Does watching violence on television cause children to behave more aggressively? In a series of experiments conducted during the early 1960s, psychologist Albert Bandura set out to investigate the impact of observed aggression on children's behavior.

In his Bobo doll experiments , children would watch an adult interacting with a Bobo doll. In one condition, the adult model behaved passively toward the doll, but in another, the adult would kick, punch, strike, and yell at the doll.

The results revealed that children who watched the adult model behave violently toward the doll were likelier to imitate the aggressive behavior later on.​

The Impact of Bandura's Social Psychology Experiment

The debate over the degree to which violence on television, movies, gaming, and other media influences children's behavior continues to rage on today, so it perhaps comes as no surprise that Bandura's findings are still so relevant.

The experiment has also helped inspire hundreds of additional studies exploring the impacts of observed aggression and violence.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

During the early 1970s, Philip Zimbardo set up a fake prison in the basement of the Stanford Psychology Department, recruited participants to play prisoners and guards, and played the role of the prison warden.

The experiment was designed to look at the effect that a prison environment would have on behavior, but it quickly became one of the most famous and controversial experiments of all time.

Results of the Stanford Prison Experiment

The Stanford prison experiment was initially slated to last a full two weeks. It ended after just six days. Why? Because the participants became so enmeshed in their assumed roles, the guards became almost sadistically abusive, and the prisoners became anxious, depressed, and emotionally disturbed.

While the Stanford prison experiment was designed to look at prison behavior, it has since become an emblem of how powerfully people are influenced by situations.  

Ethical Concerns

Part of the notoriety stems from the study's treatment of the participants. The subjects were placed in a situation that created considerable psychological distress. So much so that the study had to be halted less than halfway through the experiment.

The study has long been upheld as an example of how people yield to the situation, but critics have suggested that the participants' behavior may have been unduly influenced by Zimbardo himself in his capacity as the mock prison's "warden."  

Recent Criticisms

The Stanford prison experiment has long been controversial due to the serious ethical concerns of the research, but more recent evidence casts serious doubts on the study's scientific merits.

An examination of study records indicates participants faked their behavior to either get out of the experiment or "help" prove the researcher's hypothesis. The experimenters also appear to have encouraged certain behaviors to help foster more abusive behavior.

The Milgram Experiments

Following the trial of Adolph Eichmann for war crimes committed during World War II, psychologist Stanley Milgram wanted to better understand why people obey. "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?" Milgram wondered.

The results of Milgram's controversial obedience experiments were astonishing and continue to be both thought-provoking and controversial today.

What the Social Psychology Experiment Involved

The study involved ordering participants to deliver increasingly painful shocks to another person. While the victim was simply a confederate pretending to be injured, the participants fully believed that they were giving electrical shocks to the other person.

Even when the victim was protesting or complaining of a heart condition, 65% of the participants continued to deliver painful, possibly fatal shocks on the experimenter's orders.

Obviously, no one wants to believe that they are capable of inflicting pain or torture on another human being simply on the orders of an authority figure. The results of the obedience experiments are disturbing because they reveal that people are much more obedient than they may believe.

Controversy and Recent Criticisms

The study is also controversial because it suffers from ethical concerns, primarily the psychological distress it created for the participants. More recent findings suggest that other problems question the study's findings.

Some participants were coerced into continuing against their wishes. Many participants appeared to have guessed that the learner was faking their responses, and other variations showed that many participants refused to continue the shocks.

What This Means For You

There are many interesting and famous social psychology experiments that can reveal a lot about our understanding of social behavior and influence. However, it is important to be aware of the controversies, limitations, and criticisms of these studies. More recent research may reflect differing results. In some cases, the re-evaluation of classic studies has revealed serious ethical and methodological flaws that call the results into question.

Jeon, HL.  The environmental factor within the Solomon Asch Line Test .  International Journal of Social Science and Humanity.  2014;4(4):264-268. doi:10.7763/IJSSH.2014.V4.360 

Bandura and Bobo . Association for Psychological Science.

Zimbardo, G. The Stanford Prison Experiment: a simulation study on the psychology of imprisonment .

Le Texier T.  Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment.   Am Psychol.  2019;74(7):823-839. doi:10.1037/amp0000401

Blum B.  The lifespan of a lie .  Medium .

Baker PC. Electric Schlock: Did Stanley Milgram's famous obedience experiments prove anything? Pacific Standard .

Perry G.  Deception and illusion in Milgram's accounts of the obedience experiments .  Theory Appl Ethics . 2013;2(2):79-92.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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Stanley Milgram’s Experiment

Stanley Milgram was one of the most influential social psychologists of the twentieth century. Born in 1933 in New York, he obtained a BA from Queen’s College, and went on to receive a PhD in psychology from Harvard. Subsequently, Milgram held faculty positions in psychology at Yale University and the City University of New York until his untimely death in 1984. Although Milgram never held a formal appointment in sociology, his work was centrally focused on the social psychological aspects of social structure.

In a historic coincidence, in 1961, just as Milgram was about to begin work on his famous obedience experiments, the world witnessed the trial of Adolf Otto Eichmann, a high ranking Nazi official who was in charge of organizing the transport of millions of Jews to the death camps. To many, Eichmann appeared not at all to be the fervent anti Semite that many had suspected him to be; rather, his main defense was that he was only ‘‘following orders’’ as an administrator. To the political theorist Hannah Arendt, Eichmann’s case illustrated the ‘‘banality of evil,’’ in which personal malice appeared to matter less than the desire of individuals to fulfill their roles in the larger context of a bureaucracy. Milgram’s research is arguably the most striking example to illustrate this dynamic.

Milgram planned and conducted his obedience experiments between 1960 and 1963 at Yale University. In order to be able to study obedience to authority, he put unsuspecting research participants in a novel situation, which he staged in the laboratory. With the help of actors and props, Milgram set up an experimental ruse that was so real that hardly any of his research participants suspected that, in reality, nothing was what it pretended to be.

For this initial study, using newspaper ads promising $4.50 for participation in a psychological study, Milgram recruited men aged 20 to 50, ranging from elementary school drop outs to PhDs. Each research participant arrived in the lab along with another man, white and roughly 30 years of age, whom they thought to be another research participant. In reality, this person was a confederate, that is, an actor in cahoots with the experimenter. The experimenter explained that both men were about to take part in a study that explored the effect of punishment on memory. One man would assume the role of a ‘‘teacher’’ who would read a series of word pairings (e.g., nice day, blue box), which the other (‘‘the learner’’) was supposed to memorize. Subsequently, the teacher would read the first word of the pair with the learner having to select the correct second word from a list. Every mistake by the learner would be punished with an electric shock. It was further made clear that, although the shocks would be painful, they would not do any permanent harm.

Following this explanation, the experimenter assigned both men to the roles. Because the procedure was rigged, the unsuspecting research participant always was assigned to the role of teacher. As first order of business, the learner was seated in an armchair in an adjoining room such that he would be separated by a wall from the teacher, but would other wise be able to hear him from the main room. Electrodes were affixed to the learner’s arms, who was subsequently strapped to the chair apparently to make sure that improper movements would not endanger the success of the experiment.

In the main room, the teacher was told that he would have to apply electric shocks every time the learner made a mistake. For this purpose, the learner was seated in front of an electric generator with various dials. The experimenter instructed the teacher to steadily increase the voltage of the shock each time the learner made a new mistake. The shock generator showed a row of levers ranging from 15 volts on the left to 450 volts on the right, with each lever in between delivering a shock 15 volts higher than its neighbor on the left. Milgram labeled the voltage level, left to right, from ‘‘Slight Shock’’ to ‘‘Danger: Severe Shock,’’ with the last two switches being marked ‘‘XXX.’’ The teacher was told that he simply should work his way from the left to the right without using any lever twice. To give the teacher an idea of the electric current he would deliver to the learner, he received a sample shock of 45 volts, which most research participants found surprisingly painful. However, despite its appearance, in reality the generator never emitted any electric shocks. It was merely a device that allowed Milgram to examine how far the teacher would go in harming another person based on the experimenter’s say so.

As learning trials started, the teacher applied electric shocks to the learner. The learner’s responses were scripted such that he apparently made many mistakes, requiring the teacher to increase shock levels by 15 volts with every new mistake. As the strength of electric shocks increased, occasional grunts and moans of pain were heard from the learner. At 120 volts the learner started complaining about the pain. At 150 volts, the learner demanded to be released on account of a heart condition, and the protest continued until the shocks reached 300 volts and the learner started pounding on the wall. At 315 volts the learner stopped responding altogether.

As the complaints by the learner started, the teacher would often turn to the experimenter, who was seated at a nearby desk, wondering whether and how to proceed. The experimenter, instead of terminating the experiment, replied with a scripted succession of prods:

• Prod 1: ‘‘Please continue.’’
• Prod 2: ‘‘The experiment requires that you continue.’’
• Prod 3: ‘‘It is absolutely necessary to continue.’’
• Prod 4: ‘‘You have no other choice: you must go on.’’

These prods were successful in coaxing many teachers into continuing to apply electric shocks even when the learner no longer responded to the word memory questions. Indeed, in the first of Milgram’s experiments, a stunning 65 percent of all participants continued all the way to 450 volts, and not a single participant refused to continue the shocks before they reached the 300 volt level! The high levels of compliance illustrate the powerful effect of the social structure that participants had entered. By accepting the role of teacher in the experiment in exchange for the payment of a nominal fee, participants had agreed to accept the authority of the experimenter and carry out his instructions. In other words, just as Milgram suspected, the social forces of hierarchy and obedience could push normal and well adjusted individuals into harming others.

The overall level of obedience, however, does not reveal the tremendous amount of stress that all teachers experienced. Because the situation was extremely realistic, teachers were agonizing over whether or not to continue the electric shocks. Should they care for the well being of the obviously imperiled learners and even put their life in danger? Or should they abide by a legitimate authority figure, who presented his instructions crisply and confidently? Participants typically sought to resolve this conflict by seeking assurances that the experimenter, and not themselves, would accept full responsibility for their actions. Once they felt assured, they typically continued to apply shocks that would have likely electrocuted the learner.

Milgram expanded his initial research into a series of 19 experiments in which he carefully examined the conditions under which obedience would occur. For instance, the teacher’s proximity to the learner was an important factor in lowering obedience, that is, the proportion of people willing to deliver the full 450 volts. When the teacher was in the same room with the learner, obedience dropped to 40 percent, and when the teacher was required to touch the learner and apply physical force to deliver the electric shock, obedience dropped to 30 percent.

Milgram further suspected that the social status of the experimenter, presumably a serious Yale University researcher in a white lab coat, would have important implications for obedience. Indeed, when there was no obvious connection with Yale, and the above experiment was repeated in a run down office building in Bridgeport, Connecticut, obedience dropped to 48 percent. Indeed, when not the white coated experimenter but another confederate encouraged the teacher to continue the shocks, all participants terminated the experiment as soon as the confederate complained. Milgram concluded that ‘‘a substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and with out limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority’’ (1965). However, additional studies highlighted that obedience is in part contingent on surveillance. When the experimenter transmitted his orders not in person but via telephone, obedience levels dropped to 20 percent, with many participants only pretending to apply higher and higher electric shocks.

Since its initial publication in 1963, Mil gram’s research has drawn a lot of criticism, mainly on ethical grounds. First, it was alleged that it was unethical to deceive participants to the extent that occurred in these studies. It is important to note that all participants were fully debriefed on the deception, and most did not seem to mind and were relieved to find out that they had not shocked the learner. The second ethical criticism is, however, much more serious. As alluded to earlier, Milgram exposed his participants to tremendous levels of stress. Milgram, anticipating this criticism, inter viewed participants after the experiment and followed up several weeks later. The over whelming majority of his participants commented that they enjoyed being in the experiment, and only a small minority experienced regret. Even though personally Milgram rejected allegations of having mistreated his participants, his own work suggests that he may have gone too far: ‘‘Subjects were observed to sweat, tremble, bite their lips, groan, and dig their fingernails into their flesh . . . A mature and initially poised businessman entered the laboratory smiling and confident. Within 20 minutes, he was reduced to a twitching, stuttering wreck who was rapidly approaching a point of nervous collapse’’ (1963: 375). Today, Milgram’s obedience studies are generally considered unethical and would not pass muster with regard to contemporary regulations protecting the well being of research participants. Ironically, partly because Milgram’s studies illustrated the power of hierarchical social relationships, contemporary researchers are at great pains to avoid coercion and allow participants to terminate their participation in any research study at any time without penalty.

Another type of criticism of the obedience studies has questioned their generality and charged that their usefulness in explaining real world events is limited. Indeed, Milgram conducted his research when trust in authorities was higher than it is nowadays. However, Milgram’s studies have withstood this criticism. Reviews of research conducted using Milgram’s paradigm have generally found obedience levels to be at roughly 60 percent (see, e.g., Blass 2000). In one of his studies Milgram further documented that there was no apparent difference in the responses of women and men. More recent research using more ethically acceptable methods further testifies to the power of obedience in shaping human action (Blass 2000).

Milgram offers an important approach to explaining the Holocaust by emphasizing the bureaucratic nature of evil, which relegated individuals to executioners of orders issued by a legitimate authority. Sociologists have extended this analysis and provided compelling accounts of obedience as root causes of many horrific crimes, ranging from the My Lai massacre to Watergate (Hamilton & Kelman 1989). How ever, it is arguably somewhat unclear to what extent Milgram’s findings can help explain the occurrence of the Holocaust itself. Whereas obedience kept the machinery of death running with frightening efficiency, historians often caution against ignoring the malice and sadism that many of Hitler’s executioners brought to the task (see Blass 2004).

Milgram’s dramatic experiments have left a lasting impression beyond the social sciences. They are the topic of various movies, including the 1975 TV film The Tenth Level starring William Shatner. Further, the 37 percent of participants who did not obey were memorialized in a 1986 song by the rock musician Peter Gabriel titled ‘‘We Do What We’re Told (Milgram’s 37).’’

References:

• Blass, T. (Ed.) (2000) Obedience to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ.
• Blass, T. (2004) The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram. Basic Books, New York.
• Hamilton, V. L. & Kelman, H. (1989) Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility. Yale University Press, New Haven.
• Milgram, S. (1963) Behavioral Study of Obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 69: 371-8.
• Milgram, S. (1965) Some Conditions of Obedience and Disobedience to Authority. Human Relations 18: 57-76.
• Milgram, S. (1974) Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. Harper & Row, New York.

Stanley Milgram Shock Experiment

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, carried out one of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology.

He conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience.

Milgram (1963) examined justifications for acts of genocide offered by those accused at the World War II, Nuremberg War Criminal trials. Their defense often was based on obedience  – that they were just following orders from their superiors.

The experiments began in July 1961, a year after the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiment to answer the question:

Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” (Milgram, 1974).

Milgram (1963) wanted to investigate whether Germans were particularly obedient to authority figures, as this was a common explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II.

Milgram selected participants for his experiment by newspaper advertising for male participants to take part in a study of learning at Yale University.

The procedure was that the participant was paired with another person and they drew lots to find out who would be the ‘learner’ and who would be the ‘teacher.’  The draw was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher, and the learner was one of Milgram’s confederates (pretending to be a real participant).

The learner (a confederate called Mr. Wallace) was taken into a room and had electrodes attached to his arms, and the teacher and researcher went into a room next door that contained an electric shock generator and a row of switches marked from 15 volts (Slight Shock) to 375 volts (Danger: Severe Shock) to 450 volts (XXX).

The shocks in Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments were not real. The “learners” were actors who were part of the experiment and did not actually receive any shocks.

However, the “teachers” (the real participants of the study) believed the shocks were real, which was crucial for the experiment to measure obedience to authority figures even when it involved causing harm to others.

Milgram’s Experiment (1963)

Milgram (1963) was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person.

Stanley Milgram was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities, for example, Germans in WWII.

Volunteers were recruited for a controlled experiment investigating “learning” (re: ethics: deception). 

Participants were 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, whose jobs ranged from unskilled to professional, from the New Haven area. They were paid $4.50 for just turning up.

At the beginning of the experiment, they were introduced to another participant, a confederate of the experimenter (Milgram).

They drew straws to determine their roles – learner or teacher – although this was fixed, and the confederate was always the learner. There was also an “experimenter” dressed in a gray lab coat, played by an actor (not Milgram).

Two rooms in the Yale Interaction Laboratory were used – one for the learner (with an electric chair) and another for the teacher and experimenter with an electric shock generator.

The “learner” (Mr. Wallace) was strapped to a chair with electrodes.

After he has learned a list of word pairs given to him to learn, the “teacher” tests him by naming a word and asking the learner to recall its partner/pair from a list of four possible choices.

The teacher is told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time. There were 30 switches on the shock generator marked from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 (danger – severe shock).

The learner gave mainly wrong answers (on purpose), and for each of these, the teacher gave him an electric shock. When the teacher refused to administer a shock, the experimenter was to give a series of orders/prods to ensure they continued.

There were four prods, and if one was not obeyed, then the experimenter (Mr. Williams) read out the next prod, and so on.

Prod 1 : Please continue. Prod 2: The experiment requires you to continue. Prod 3 : It is absolutely essential that you continue. Prod 4 : You have no other choice but to continue.

These prods were to be used in order, and begun afresh for each new attempt at defiance (Milgram, 1974, p. 21). The experimenter also had two special prods available. These could be used as required by the situation:

• Although the shocks may be painful, there is no permanent tissue damage, so please go on’ (ibid.)
• ‘Whether the learner likes it or not, you must go on until he has learned all the word pairs correctly. So please go on’ (ibid., p. 22).

65% (two-thirds) of participants (i.e., teachers) continued to the highest level of 450 volts. All the participants continued to 300 volts.

Milgram did more than one experiment – he carried out 18 variations of his study.  All he did was alter the situation (IV) to see how this affected obedience (DV).

Conclusion 

The individual explanation for the behavior of the participants would be that it was something about them as people that caused them to obey, but a more realistic explanation is that the situation they were in influenced them and caused them to behave in the way that they did.

Some aspects of the situation that may have influenced their behavior include the formality of the location, the behavior of the experimenter, and the fact that it was an experiment for which they had volunteered and been paid.

Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being.  Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up.

People tend to obey orders from other people if they recognize their authority as morally right and/or legally based. This response to legitimate authority is learned in a variety of situations, for example in the family, school, and workplace.

Milgram summed up in the article “The Perils of Obedience” (Milgram 1974), writing:

“The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.”

Milgram’s Agency Theory

Milgram (1974) explained the behavior of his participants by suggesting that people have two states of behavior when they are in a social situation:

• The autonomous state – people direct their own actions, and they take responsibility for the results of those actions.
• The agentic state – people allow others to direct their actions and then pass off the responsibility for the consequences to the person giving the orders. In other words, they act as agents for another person’s will.

Milgram suggested that two things must be in place for a person to enter the agentic state:

• The person giving the orders is perceived as being qualified to direct other people’s behavior. That is, they are seen as legitimate.
• The person being ordered about is able to believe that the authority will accept responsibility for what happens.

According to Milgram, when in this agentic state, the participant in the obedience studies “defines himself in a social situation in a manner that renders him open to regulation by a person of higher status. In this condition the individual no longer views himself as responsible for his own actions but defines himself as an instrument for carrying out the wishes of others” (Milgram, 1974, p. 134).

Agency theory says that people will obey an authority when they believe that the authority will take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. This is supported by some aspects of Milgram’s evidence.

For example, when participants were reminded that they had responsibility for their own actions, almost none of them were prepared to obey.

In contrast, many participants who were refusing to go on did so if the experimenter said that he would take responsibility.

According to Milgram (1974, p. 188):

“The behavior revealed in the experiments reported here is normal human behavior but revealed under conditions that show with particular clarity the danger to human survival inherent in our make-up.

And what is it we have seen? Not aggression, for there is no anger, vindictiveness, or hatred in those who shocked the victim….

Something far more dangerous is revealed: the capacity for man to abandon his humanity, indeed, the inevitability that he does so, as he merges his unique personality into larger institutional structures.”

Milgram Experiment Variations

The Milgram experiment was carried out many times whereby Milgram (1965) varied the basic procedure (changed the IV).  By doing this Milgram could identify which factors affected obedience (the DV).

Obedience was measured by how many participants shocked to the maximum 450 volts (65% in the original study). Stanley Milgram conducted a total of 23 variations (also called conditions or experiments) of his original obedience study:

In total, 636 participants were tested in 18 variation studies conducted between 1961 and 1962 at Yale University.

In the original baseline study – the experimenter wore a gray lab coat to symbolize his authority (a kind of uniform).

The lab coat worn by the experimenter in the original study served as a crucial symbol of scientific authority that increased obedience. The lab coat conveyed expertise and legitimacy, making participants see the experimenter as more credible and trustworthy.

Milgram carried out a variation in which the experimenter was called away because of a phone call right at the start of the procedure.

The role of the experimenter was then taken over by an ‘ordinary member of the public’ ( a confederate) in everyday clothes rather than a lab coat. The obedience level dropped to 20%.

Change of Location:  The Mountain View Facility Study (1963, unpublished)

Milgram conducted this variation in a set of offices in a rundown building, claiming it was associated with “Research Associates of Bridgeport” rather than Yale.

The lab’s ordinary appearance was designed to test if Yale’s prestige encouraged obedience. Participants were led to believe that a private research firm experimented.

In this non-university setting, obedience rates dropped to 47.5% compared to 65% in the original Yale experiments. This suggests that the status of location affects obedience.

Private research firms are viewed as less prestigious than certain universities, which affects behavior. It is easier under these conditions to abandon the belief in the experimenter’s essential decency.

The impressive university setting reinforced the experimenter’s authority and conveyed an implicit approval of the research.

Milgram filmed this variation for his documentary Obedience , but did not publish the results in his academic papers. The study only came to wider light when archival materials, including his notes, films, and data, were studied by later researchers like Perry (2013) in the decades after Milgram’s death.

Two Teacher Condition

When participants could instruct an assistant (confederate) to press the switches, 92.5% shocked to the maximum of 450 volts.

Allowing the participant to instruct an assistant to press the shock switches diffused personal responsibility and likely reduced perceptions of causing direct harm.

By attributing the actions to the assistant rather than themselves, participants could more easily justify shocking to the maximum 450 volts, reflected in the 92.5% obedience rate.

When there is less personal responsibility, obedience increases. This relates to Milgram’s Agency Theory.

Touch Proximity Condition

The teacher had to force the learner’s hand down onto a shock plate when the learner refused to participate after 150 volts. Obedience fell to 30%.

Forcing the learner’s hand onto the shock plate after 150 volts physically connected the teacher to the consequences of their actions. This direct tactile feedback increased the teacher’s personal responsibility.

No longer shielded from the learner’s reactions, the proximity enabled participants to more clearly perceive the harm they were causing, reducing obedience to 30%. Physical distance and indirect actions in the original setup made it easier to rationalize obeying the experimenter.

The participant is no longer buffered/protected from seeing the consequences of their actions.

Social Support Condition

When the two confederates set an example of defiance by refusing to continue the shocks, especially early on at 150 volts, it permitted the real participant also to resist authority.

Two other participants (confederates) were also teachers but refused to obey. Confederate 1 stopped at 150 volts, and Confederate 2 stopped at 210 volts.

Their disobedience provided social proof that it was acceptable to disobey. This modeling of defiance lowered obedience to only 10% compared to 65% without such social support. It demonstrated that social modeling can validate challenging authority.

The presence of others who are seen to disobey the authority figure reduces the level of obedience to 10%.

Absent Experimenter Condition 

It is easier to resist the orders from an authority figure if they are not close by. When the experimenter instructed and prompted the teacher by telephone from another room, obedience fell to 20.5%.

Many participants cheated and missed out on shocks or gave less voltage than ordered by the experimenter. The proximity of authority figures affects obedience.

The physical absence of the authority figure enabled participants to act more freely on their own moral inclinations rather than the experimenter’s commands. This highlighted the role of an authority’s direct presence in influencing behavior.

A key reason the obedience studies fascinate people is Milgram presented them as a scientific experiment, contrasting himself as an “empirically grounded scientist” compared to philosophers. He claimed he systematically varied factors to alter obedience rates.

However, recent scholarship using archival records shows Milgram’s account of standardizing the procedure was misleading. For example, he published a list of standardized prods the experimenter used when participants questioned continuing. Milgram said these were delivered uniformly in a firm but polite tone.

Analyzing audiotapes, Gibson (2013) found considerable variation from the published protocol – the prods differed across trials. The point is not that Milgram did poor science, but that the archival materials reveal the limitations of the textbook account of his “standardized” procedure.

The qualitative data like participant feedback, Milgram’s notes, and researchers’ actions provide a fuller, messier picture than the obedience studies’ “official” story. For psychology students, this shows how scientific reporting can polish findings in a way that strays from the less tidy reality.

Critical Evaluation

Inaccurate description of the prod methodology:.

A key reason the obedience studies fascinate people is Milgram (1974) presented them as a scientific experiment, contrasting himself as an “empirically grounded scientist” compared to philosophers. He claimed he systematically varied factors to alter obedience rates.

However, recent scholarship using archival records shows Milgram’s account of standardizing the procedure was misleading. For example, he published a list of standardized prods the experimenter used when participants questioned continuing. Milgram said these were delivered uniformly in a firm but polite tone (Gibson, 2013; Perry, 2013; Russell, 2010).

Perry’s (2013) archival research revealed another discrepancy between Milgram’s published account and the actual events. Milgram claimed standardized prods were used when participants resisted, but Perry’s audiotape analysis showed the experimenter often improvised more coercive prods beyond the supposed script.

This off-script prodding varied between experiments and participants, and was especially prevalent with female participants where no gender obedience difference was found – suggesting the improvisation influenced results. Gibson (2013) and Russell (2009) corroborated the experimenter’s departures from the supposed fixed prods. 

Prods were often combined or modified rather than used verbatim as published.

Russell speculated the improvisation aimed to achieve outcomes the experimenter believed Milgram wanted. Milgram seemed to tacitly approve of the deviations by not correcting them when observing.

This raises significant issues around experimenter bias influencing results, lack of standardization compromising validity, and ethical problems with Milgram misrepresenting procedures.

Milgram’s experiment lacked external validity:

The Milgram studies were conducted in laboratory-type conditions, and we must ask if this tells us much about real-life situations.

We obey in a variety of real-life situations that are far more subtle than instructions to give people electric shocks, and it would be interesting to see what factors operate in everyday obedience. The sort of situation Milgram investigated would be more suited to a military context.

Orne and Holland (1968) accused Milgram’s study of lacking ‘experimental realism,”’ i.e.,” participants might not have believed the experimental set-up they found themselves in and knew the learner wasn’t receiving electric shocks.

“It’s more truthful to say that only half of the people who undertook the experiment fully believed it was real, and of those two-thirds disobeyed the experimenter,” observes Perry (p. 139).

Milgram’s sample was biased:

• The participants in Milgram’s study were all male. Do the findings transfer to females?
• Milgram’s study cannot be seen as representative of the American population as his sample was self-selected. This is because they became participants only by electing to respond to a newspaper advertisement (selecting themselves).
• They may also have a typical “volunteer personality” – not all the newspaper readers responded so perhaps it takes this personality type to do so.

Yet a total of 636 participants were tested in 18 separate experiments across the New Haven area, which was seen as being reasonably representative of a typical American town.

Milgram’s findings have been replicated in a variety of cultures and most lead to the same conclusions as Milgram’s original study and in some cases see higher obedience rates.

However, Smith and Bond (1998) point out that with the exception of Jordan (Shanab & Yahya, 1978), the majority of these studies have been conducted in industrialized Western cultures, and we should be cautious before we conclude that a universal trait of social behavior has been identified.

Selective reporting of experimental findings:

Perry (2013) found Milgram omitted findings from some obedience experiments he conducted, reporting only results supporting his conclusions. A key omission was the Relationship condition (conducted in 1962 but unpublished), where participant pairs were relatives or close acquaintances.

When the learner protested being shocked, most teachers disobeyed, contradicting Milgram’s emphasis on obedience to authority.

Perry argued Milgram likely did not publish this 85% disobedience rate because it undermined his narrative and would be difficult to defend ethically since the teacher and learner knew each other closely.

Milgram’s selective reporting biased interpretations of his findings. His failure to publish all his experiments raises issues around researchers’ ethical obligation to completely and responsibly report their results, not just those fitting their expectations.

Unreported analysis of participants’ skepticism and its impact on their behavior:

Perry (2013) found archival evidence that many participants expressed doubt about the experiment’s setup, impacting their behavior. This supports Orne and Holland’s (1968) criticism that Milgram overlooked participants’ perceptions.

Incongruities like apparent danger, but an unconcerned experimenter likely cued participants that no real harm would occur. Trust in Yale’s ethics reinforced this. Yet Milgram did not publish his assistant’s analysis showing participant skepticism correlated with disobedience rates and varied by condition.

Obedient participants were more skeptical that the learner was harmed. This selective reporting biased interpretations. Additional unreported findings further challenge Milgram’s conclusions.

This highlights issues around thoroughly and responsibly reporting all results, not just those fitting expectations. It shows how archival evidence makes Milgram’s study a contentious classic with questionable methods and conclusions.

Ethical Issues

What are the potential ethical concerns associated with Milgram’s research on obedience?

While not a “contribution to psychology” in the traditional sense, Milgram’s obedience experiments sparked significant debate about the ethics of psychological research.

Baumrind (1964) criticized the ethics of Milgram’s research as participants were prevented from giving their informed consent to take part in the study. 

Participants assumed the experiment was benign and expected to be treated with dignity.

As a result of studies like Milgram’s, the APA and BPS now require researchers to give participants more information before they agree to take part in a study.

The participants actually believed they were shocking a real person and were unaware the learner was a confederate of Milgram’s.

However, Milgram argued that “illusion is used when necessary in order to set the stage for the revelation of certain difficult-to-get-at-truths.”

Milgram also interviewed participants afterward to find out the effect of the deception. Apparently, 83.7% said that they were “glad to be in the experiment,” and 1.3% said that they wished they had not been involved.

Protection of participants 

Participants were exposed to extremely stressful situations that may have the potential to cause psychological harm. Many of the participants were visibly distressed (Baumrind, 1964).

Signs of tension included trembling, sweating, stuttering, laughing nervously, biting lips and digging fingernails into palms of hands. Three participants had uncontrollable seizures, and many pleaded to be allowed to stop the experiment.

Milgram described a businessman reduced to a “twitching stuttering wreck” (1963, p. 377),

In his defense, Milgram argued that these effects were only short-term. Once the participants were debriefed (and could see the confederate was OK), their stress levels decreased.

“At no point,” Milgram (1964) stated, “were subjects exposed to danger and at no point did they run the risk of injurious effects resulting from participation” (p. 849).

To defend himself against criticisms about the ethics of his obedience research, Milgram cited follow-up survey data showing that 84% of participants said they were glad they had taken part in the study.

Milgram used this to claim that the study caused no serious or lasting harm, since most participants retrospectively did not regret their involvement.

Yet archival accounts show many participants endured lasting distress, even trauma, refuting Milgram’s insistence the study caused only fleeting “excitement.” By not debriefing all, Milgram misled participants about the true risks involved (Perry, 2013).

However, Milgram did debrief the participants fully after the experiment and also followed up after a period of time to ensure that they came to no harm.

Milgram debriefed all his participants straight after the experiment and disclosed the true nature of the experiment.

Participants were assured that their behavior was common, and Milgram also followed the sample up a year later and found no signs of any long-term psychological harm.

The majority of the participants (83.7%) said that they were pleased that they had participated, and 74% had learned something of personal importance.

Perry’s (2013) archival research found Milgram misrepresented debriefing – around 600 participants were not properly debriefed soon after the study, contrary to his claims. Many only learned no real shocks occurred when reading a mailed study report months later, which some may have not received.

Milgram likely misreported debriefing details to protect his credibility and enable future obedience research. This raises issues around properly informing and debriefing participants that connect to APA ethics codes developed partly in response to Milgram’s study.

Right to Withdrawal 

The BPS states that researchers should make it plain to participants that they are free to withdraw at any time (regardless of payment).

When expressing doubts, the experimenter assured them all was well. Trusting Yale scientists, many took the experimenter at his word that “no permanent tissue damage” would occur, and continued administering shocks despite reservations.

Did Milgram give participants an opportunity to withdraw? The experimenter gave four verbal prods which mostly discouraged withdrawal from the experiment:

• Please continue.
• The experiment requires that you continue.
• It is absolutely essential that you continue.
• You have no other choice, you must go on.

Milgram argued that they were justified as the study was about obedience, so orders were necessary.

Milgram pointed out that although the right to withdraw was made partially difficult, it was possible as 35% of participants had chosen to withdraw.

Replications

Direct replications have not been possible due to current ethical standards . However, several researchers have conducted partial replications and variations that aim to reproduce some aspects of Milgram’s methods ethically.

One important replication was conducted by Jerry Burger in 2009. Burger’s partial replication included several safeguards to protect participant welfare, such as screening out high-risk individuals, repeatedly reminding participants they could withdraw, and stopping at the 150-volt shock level. This was the point where Milgram’s participants first heard the learner’s protests.

As 79% of Milgram’s participants who went past 150 volts continued to the maximum 450 volts, Burger (2009) argued that 150 volts provided a reasonable estimate for obedience levels. He found 70% of participants continued to 150 volts, compared to 82.5% in Milgram’s comparable condition.

Another replication by Thomas Blass (1999) examined whether obedience rates had declined over time due to greater public awareness of the experiments. Blass correlated obedience rates from replication studies between 1963 and 1985 and found no relationship between year and obedience level. He concluded that obedience rates have not systematically changed, providing evidence against the idea of “enlightenment effects”.

Some variations have explored the role of gender. Milgram found equal rates of obedience for male and female participants. Reviews have found most replications also show no gender difference, with a couple of exceptions (Blass, 1999). For example, Kilham and Mann (1974) found lower obedience in female participants.

Partial replications have also examined situational factors. Having another person model defiance reduced obedience compared to a solo participant in one study, but did not eliminate it (Burger, 2009). The authority figure’s perceived expertise seems to be an influential factor (Blass, 1999). Replications have supported Milgram’s observation that stepwise increases in demands promote obedience.

Personality factors have been studied as well. Traits like high empathy and desire for control correlate with some minor early hesitation, but do not greatly impact eventual obedience levels (Burger, 2009). Authoritarian tendencies may contribute to obedience (Elms, 2009).

In sum, the partial replications confirm Milgram’s degree of obedience. Though ethical constraints prevent full reproductions, the key elements of his procedure seem to consistently elicit high levels of compliance across studies, samples, and eras. The replications continue to highlight the power of situational pressures to yield obedience.

Milgram (1963) Audio Clips

Below you can also hear some of the audio clips taken from the video that was made of the experiment. Just click on the clips below.

Why was the Milgram experiment so controversial?

The Milgram experiment was controversial because it revealed people’s willingness to obey authority figures even when causing harm to others, raising ethical concerns about the psychological distress inflicted upon participants and the deception involved in the study.

Would Milgram’s experiment be allowed today?

Milgram’s experiment would likely not be allowed today in its original form, as it violates modern ethical guidelines for research involving human participants, particularly regarding informed consent, deception, and protection from psychological harm.

Did anyone refuse the Milgram experiment?

Yes, in the Milgram experiment, some participants refused to continue administering shocks, demonstrating individual variation in obedience to authority figures. In the original Milgram experiment, approximately 35% of participants refused to administer the highest shock level of 450 volts, while 65% obeyed and delivered the 450-volt shock.

How can Milgram’s study be applied to real life?

Milgram’s study can be applied to real life by demonstrating the potential for ordinary individuals to obey authority figures even when it involves causing harm, emphasizing the importance of questioning authority, ethical decision-making, and fostering critical thinking in societal contexts.

Were all participants in Milgram’s experiments male?

Yes, in the original Milgram experiment conducted in 1961, all participants were male, limiting the generalizability of the findings to women and diverse populations.

Why was the Milgram experiment unethical?

The Milgram experiment was considered unethical because participants were deceived about the true nature of the study and subjected to severe emotional distress. They believed they were causing harm to another person under the instruction of authority.

Additionally, participants were not given the right to withdraw freely and were subjected to intense pressure to continue. The psychological harm and lack of informed consent violates modern ethical guidelines for research.

Baumrind, D. (1964). Some thoughts on ethics of research: After reading Milgram’s” Behavioral study of obedience.”.  American Psychologist ,  19 (6), 421.

Blass, T. (1999). The Milgram paradigm after 35 years: Some things we now know about obedience to authority 1.  Journal of Applied Social Psychology ,  29 (5), 955-978.

Brannigan, A., Nicholson, I., & Cherry, F. (2015). Introduction to the special issue: Unplugging the Milgram machine.  Theory & Psychology ,  25 (5), 551-563.

Burger, J. M. (2009). Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today? American Psychologist, 64 , 1–11.

Elms, A. C. (2009). Obedience lite. American Psychologist, 64 (1), 32–36.

Gibson, S. (2013). Milgram’s obedience experiments: A rhetorical analysis. British Journal of Social Psychology, 52, 290–309.

Gibson, S. (2017). Developing psychology’s archival sensibilities: Revisiting Milgram’s obedience’ experiments.  Qualitative Psychology ,  4 (1), 73.

Griggs, R. A., Blyler, J., & Jackson, S. L. (2020). Using research ethics as a springboard for teaching Milgram’s obedience study as a contentious classic.  Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology ,  6 (4), 350.

Haslam, S. A., & Reicher, S. D. (2018). A truth that does not always speak its name: How Hollander and Turowetz’s findings confirm and extend the engaged followership analysis of harm-doing in the Milgram paradigm. British Journal of Social Psychology, 57, 292–300.

Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., & Birney, M. E. (2016). Questioning authority: New perspectives on Milgram’s ‘obedience’ research and its implications for intergroup relations. Current Opinion in Psychology, 11 , 6–9.

Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., Birney, M. E., Millard, K., & McDonald, R. (2015). ‘Happy to have been of service’: The Yale archive as a window into the engaged followership of participants in Milgram’s ‘obedience’ experiment. British Journal of Social Psychology, 54 , 55–83.

Kaplan, D. E. (1996). The Stanley Milgram papers: A case study on appraisal of and access to confidential data files. American Archivist, 59 , 288–297.

Kaposi, D. (2022). The second wave of critical engagement with Stanley Milgram’s ‘obedience to authority’experiments: What did we learn?.  Social and Personality Psychology Compass ,  16 (6), e12667.

Kilham, W., & Mann, L. (1974). Level of destructive obedience as a function of transmitter and executant roles in the Milgram obedience paradigm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 29 (5), 696–702.

Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience . Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology , 67, 371-378.

Milgram, S. (1964). Issues in the study of obedience: A reply to Baumrind. American Psychologist, 19 , 848–852.

Milgram, S. (1965). Some conditions of obedience and disobedience to authority . Human Relations, 18(1) , 57-76.

Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view . Harpercollins.

Miller, A. G. (2009). Reflections on” Replicating Milgram”(Burger, 2009), American Psychologis t, 64 (1):20-27

Nicholson, I. (2011). “Torture at Yale”: Experimental subjects, laboratory torment and the “rehabilitation” of Milgram’s “obedience to authority”. Theory & Psychology, 21 , 737–761.

Nicholson, I. (2015). The normalization of torment: Producing and managing anguish in Milgram’s “obedience” laboratory. Theory & Psychology, 25 , 639–656.

Orne, M. T., & Holland, C. H. (1968). On the ecological validity of laboratory deceptions. International Journal of Psychiatry, 6 (4), 282-293.

Orne, M. T., & Holland, C. C. (1968). Some conditions of obedience and disobedience to authority. On the ecological validity of laboratory deceptions. International Journal of Psychiatry, 6 , 282–293.

Perry, G. (2013). Behind the shock machine: The untold story of the notorious Milgram psychology experiments . New York, NY: The New Press.

Reicher, S., Haslam, A., & Miller, A. (Eds.). (2014). Milgram at 50: Exploring the enduring relevance of psychology’s most famous studies [Special issue]. Journal of Social Issues, 70 (3), 393–602

Russell, N. (2014). Stanley Milgram’s obedience to authority “relationship condition”: Some methodological and theoretical implications. Social Sciences, 3, 194–214

Shanab, M. E., & Yahya, K. A. (1978). A cross-cultural study of obedience. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society .

Smith, P. B., & Bond, M. H. (1998). Social psychology across cultures (2nd Edition) . Prentice Hall.

Further Reading

• The power of the situation: The impact of Milgram’s obedience studies on personality and social psychology
• Seeing is believing: The role of the film Obedience in shaping perceptions of Milgram’s Obedience to Authority Experiments
• Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today?

Learning Check

Which is true regarding the Milgram obedience study?

• The aim was to see how obedient people would be in a situation where following orders would mean causing harm to another person.
• Participants were under the impression they were part of a learning and memory experiment.
• The “learners” in the study were actual participants who volunteered to be shocked as part of the experiment.
• The “learner” was an actor who was in on the experiment and never actually received any real shocks.
• Although the participant could not see the “learner”, he was able to hear him clearly through the wall
• The study was directly influenced by Milgram’s observations of obedience patterns in post-war Europe.
• The experiment was designed to understand the psychological mechanisms behind war crimes committed during World War II.
• The Milgram study was universally accepted in the psychological community, and no ethical concerns were raised about its methodology.
• When Milgram’s experiment was repeated in a rundown office building in Bridgeport, the percentage of the participants who fully complied with the commands of the experimenter remained unchanged.
• The experimenter (authority figure) delivered verbal prods to encourage the teacher to continue, such as ‘Please continue’ or ‘Please go on’.
• Over 80% of participants went on to deliver the maximum level of shock.
• Milgram sent participants questionnaires after the study to assess the effects and found that most felt no remorse or guilt, so it was ethical.
• The aftermath of the study led to stricter ethical guidelines in psychological research.
• The study emphasized the role of situational factors over personality traits in determining obedience.

Answers : Items 3, 8, 9, and 11 are the false statements.

Short Answer Questions

• Briefly explain the results of the original Milgram experiments. What did these results prove?
• List one scenario on how an authority figure can abuse obedience principles.
• List one scenario on how an individual could use these principles to defend their fellow peers.
• In a hospital, you are very likely to obey a nurse. However, if you meet her outside the hospital, for example in a shop, you are much less likely to obey. Using your knowledge of how people resist pressure to obey, explain why you are less likely to obey the nurse outside the hospital.
• Describe the shock instructions the participant (teacher) was told to follow when the victim (learner) gave an incorrect answer.
• State the lowest voltage shock that was labeled on the shock generator.
• What would likely happen if Milgram’s experiment included a condition in which the participant (teacher) had to give a high-level electric shock for the first wrong answer?

Group Activity

Gather in groups of three or four to discuss answers to the short answer questions above.

For question 2, review the different scenarios you each came up with. Then brainstorm on how these situations could be flipped.

For question 2, discuss how an authority figure could instead empower those below them in the examples your groupmates provide.

For question 3, discuss how a peer could do harm by using the obedience principles in the scenarios your groupmates provide.

Essay Topic

• What’s the most important lesson of Milgram’s Obedience Experiments? Fully explain and defend your answer.
• Milgram selectively edited his film of the obedience experiments to emphasize obedient behavior and minimize footage of disobedience. What are the ethical implications of a researcher selectively presenting findings in a way that fits their expected conclusions?

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Author Interviews

Taking a closer look at milgram's shocking obedience study.

Behind the Shock Machine

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In the early 1960s, Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist at Yale, conducted a series of experiments that became famous. Unsuspecting Americans were recruited for what purportedly was an experiment in learning. A man who pretended to be a recruit himself was wired up to a phony machine that supposedly administered shocks. He was the "learner." In some versions of the experiment he was in an adjoining room.

The unsuspecting subject of the experiment, the "teacher," read lists of words that tested the learner's memory. Each time the learner got one wrong, which he intentionally did, the teacher was instructed by a man in a white lab coat to deliver a shock. With each wrong answer the voltage went up. From the other room came recorded and convincing protests from the learner — even though no shock was actually being administered.

The results of Milgram's experiment made news and contributed a dismaying piece of wisdom to the public at large: It was reported that almost two-thirds of the subjects were capable of delivering painful, possibly lethal shocks, if told to do so. We are as obedient as Nazi functionaries.

Or are we? Gina Perry, a psychologist from Australia, has written Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments . She has been retracing Milgram's steps, interviewing his subjects decades later.

"The thought of quitting never ... occurred to me," study participant Bill Menold told Perry in an Australian radio documentary . "Just to say: 'You know what? I'm walking out of here' — which I could have done. It was like being in a situation that you never thought you would be in, not really being able to think clearly."

In his experiments, Milgram was "looking to investigate what it was that had contributed to the brainwashing of American prisoners of war by the Chinese [in the Korean war]," Perry tells NPR's Robert Siegel.

Interview Highlights

On turning from an admirer of Milgram to a critic

"That was an unexpected outcome for me, really. I regarded Stanley Milgram as a misunderstood genius who'd been penalized in some ways for revealing something troubling and profound about human nature. By the end of my research I actually had quite a very different view of the man and the research."

Watch A Video Of One Of The Milgram Obedience Experiments

On the many variations of the experiment

"Over 700 people took part in the experiments. When the news of the experiment was first reported, and the shocking statistic that 65 percent of people went to maximum voltage on the shock machine was reported, very few people, I think, realized then and even realize today that that statistic applied to 26 of 40 people. Of those other 700-odd people, obedience rates varied enormously. In fact, there were variations of the experiment where no one obeyed."

On how Milgram's study coincided with the trial of Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann — and how the experiment reinforced what Hannah Arendt described as "the banality of evil"

"The Eichmann trial was a televised trial and it did reintroduce the whole idea of the Holocaust to a new American public. And Milgram very much, I think, believed that Hannah Arendt's view of Eichmann as a cog in a bureaucratic machine was something that was just as applicable to Americans in New Haven as it was to people in Germany."

On the ethics of working with human subjects

"Certainly for people in academia and scholars the ethical issues involved in Milgram's experiment have always been a hot issue. They were from the very beginning. And Milgram's experiment really ignited a debate particularly in social sciences about what was acceptable to put human subjects through."

Gina Perry is an Australian psychologist. She has previously written for The Age and The Australian. Chris Beck/Courtesy of The New Press hide caption

Gina Perry is an Australian psychologist. She has previously written for The Age and The Australian.

On conversations with the subjects, decades after the experiment

"[Bill Menold] doesn't sound resentful. I'd say he sounds thoughtful and he has reflected a lot on the experiment and the impact that it's had on him and what it meant at the time. I did interview someone else who had been disobedient in the experiment but still very much resented 50 years later that he'd never been de-hoaxed at the time and he found that really unacceptable."

On the problem that one of social psychology's most famous findings cannot be replicated

"I think it leaves social psychology in a difficult situation. ... it is such an iconic experiment. And I think it really leads to the question of why it is that we continue to refer to and believe in Milgram's results. I think the reason that Milgram's experiment is still so famous today is because in a way it's like a powerful parable. It's so widely known and so often quoted that it's taken on a life of its own. ... This experiment and this story about ourselves plays some role for us 50 years later."

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# 5 Famous Social Psychology Experiments

There are countless social psychology experiments that have been influential. Here, we highlight five powerful experiments in social psychology that have shaped the development of the field.

# 1. Solomon Asch’s Experiments on Conformity

Solomon Asch carried out a series of psychological tests known as the Asch Conformity Experiments in the 1950s to find out how much social pressure from the majority group could persuade a person to conform. Asch’s experimental hypothesis was centered around how people gave in to peer pressure and whether they would disregard their own opinions in order to fit in with the group. The experiment summary of the Asch conformity studies is that several lines with different heights are presented and the participant is challenged by the confederate’s answers to either agree or disagree.

The Asch experiment's basic design comprised a subject and a cohort of accomplices. The participants were informed that they would be performing a visual perception task in which they would need to match a given line's length to one of three comparison lines.

Out of all the participants in each group, only one was truly ‘naïve’; the others were ‘confederates’ who were told to provide false answers on purpose for specific trials. Thus, the ‘naive’ participant would be challenged by the ‘confederates’ who provided wrong answers. This would essentially place the ‘naive’ participant in a challenging position to be in.

An example of the experimental procedure from Solomon Asch’s experiment on conformity in 1955. There are 6 confederates pictures and the 1 real participant, sitting in the second to last seat, who are looking at the trial stimuli at the front of the room. Image copyright: Cara Flanagan.

Throughout the trials, the confederates would intentionally select the incorrect response. The crucial query was whether the ‘naive’ participant would follow their own accurate assessment or adhere to the false majority opinion. The results and findings demonstrated that even in cases where the right response was evident, a sizable portion of the ‘naive’ participants would agree with the confederate group's inaccurate responses.

The degree of conformity was influenced by several factors:

• Group Size: Up to a certain point, conformity grew in proportion to the size of the majority. The rate of conformity did not significantly increase after a certain number of confederates.
• Unanimity: A participant was far less likely to comply if even one other person in the group provided the right response. The pressure to fit in was significantly lessened when there was a dissident voice.
• Task Difficulty: Participants found it more difficult to trust their own judgment when the task was more ambiguous or difficult, ie. when the comparison lines were more similar in size, leading to an increase in conformity.
• Response Type - Public vs. Private: When participants were required to provide their answers in public, they were more likely to comply, as opposed to when providing answers privately. Thus, one factor that clearly affected conformity was the fear of social rejection.

In summary, the Asch Conformity Experiment results emphasize the strong influence of social pressure on individual behavior and the propensity to conform even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary, have become classic studies in social psychology.

Try it out in Labvanced:

A preview of the data and Asch Conformity Experiment results recorded in Labvanced can be seen in the image below, such as the values for the presented line heights, choices, and reaction times:

View of the data collected from an online version of the Asch Conformity Experiment conducted with Labvanced.

open in new window

# 2. Bobo Doll Experiment by Albert Bandura: Social Learning Theory

Frames from a video and images shown to the children who participated in the Bobo doll experiment. Copyright owner: Albert Bandura.

Social psychologist Albert Bandura carried out a groundbreaking study in 1961 called the Bobo Doll experiment, which made a substantial contribution to our understanding of children's social learning and aggression. Bandura was curious about how children learn to pick up new behaviors by imitation and observation.

In this experiment, children interacted with a life-sized inflatable doll called Bobo while being exposed to adult models who were aggressive and non-aggressive. The conditions of the study were as follows:

• Aggressive Model Condition: Children witnessed a role model act violently against the Bobo doll. Along with hitting and kicking, the aggressive actions included verbal abuse.
• Non-Aggressive Model Condition: Children witnessed a role model who did not act aggressively toward the Bobo doll.
• Control Group: No adult role model was seen interacting with the Bandura Bobo doll.

Children were placed in a room with the Bobo doll and other toys after looking at the conditions / models. The purpose of the study was to determine whether the children would imitate the violent acts they witnessed.

The Bobo Doll study produced some fascinating results. Compared to the control group and the non-aggressive model, children who watched the aggressive model were more likely to act aggressively toward the Bobo doll. This finding aligned with Albert Bandura's social learning theory which postulates that people learn new abilities through observing and imitating the behaviors of others. The girls in the aggressive model condition also reacted more physically aggressive when the model was male, but they responded more verbally when the model was female. The observation of how frequently they punched Bobo broke the general pattern of gender-inverted effects. It was also found that boys were more likely than girls to imitate same-sex models.

Our knowledge of the roles that imitation and observational learning play in children's development of aggressive behaviors has greatly increased as a result of Bandura’s Bobo doll study.

# 3. Stanford Prison Experiment by Philip Zimbardo

Experiment participants who had the role of a ‘guard’, pictured walking in the prison yard.

Social psychologist Philip Zimbardo carried out a study at Stanford University in 1971 that is known as the Stanford Prison Experiment. The experiment's goal was to find out how people would act in a prison simulation if they were in positions of power or powerlessness.

Out of the 75 volunteers, Zimbardo and his colleagues chose 24 male college students to take part in the study. The participants were divided into two groups at random and placed in a mock prison located in the Stanford psychology building's basement: guards or inmates.

The participants were completely absorbed in their parts; guards were deindividualized by being outfitted in sunglasses and uniforms, and inmates were given numbers rather than names. The guards started acting abusively and authoritarian toward the inmates as a result of the authority that had been bestowed upon them. In response, the inmates displayed symptoms of severe stress and emotional collapse.

The experiment was supposed to last two weeks, but because of the participants' severe psychological distress, it was called off after just six days! The experiment's inherent ethical issues surfaced as a result of the situation getting worse. The study has sparked ethical questions due to issues like incomplete debriefing, intense simulation, and incompletely informed consent. Because the participants' psychological well-being was compromised, Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment has come under fire on a number of occasions.

In summary, the results for Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford experiment shed a light on how even ordinary beings can quickly adopt harmful and dangerous behaviors just because of their environment or roles. The Stanford Prison Experiment is frequently brought up in conversations concerning how circumstances can affect behavior and how people can misuse their power when they are in positions of authority.

# 4. Obedience Experiment by Stanley Milgram

The study setup of the Obedience experiment where the experimenter and student are confederates and the teacher who is the participant is instructed to administer shocks.

In the early 1960s, social psychologist Stanley Milgram carried out a number of contentious studies on submission to authority figures and the Milgram Experiment is the most well-known of these studies.

For the Obedience Experiment, three people were involved in the basic setup of the experiment: the learner (an associate of the experimenter), the teacher (a participant), and the experimenter (an authority figure). The ‘teacher’ participant was informed that the overall aim of the study was to examine the impact of punishment on learning and was directed to shock the student with progressively stronger electric shocks each time they erred on a memory task. The teacher participants were led to believe that the shocks were real (even though they weren't). Thus this setup was a mask for the real aim of the study: to assess to what extent an individual will be obedient to an authority figure, even in the case where their obedience is causing severe harm to others.

As the experiment went on, the experimenter (ie. the authority figure) would give the participant instructions to intensify the shocks while the learner, or confederate, made deliberate mistakes. Voltage levels ranging from mild to severe were labeled on the shocks, with the highest level indicating possible danger from 15 volts to 450 (danger – severe shock). Thus, the teacher could see how dangerous the high shock levels were and know they were ‘inflicting’ pain (even though the shocks were not real).

In summary, the key discovery of Milgram's Obedience to Authority experiment was that a sizable fraction of participants kept shocking the confederate even after they showed signs of distress, objected, and finally fell silent. The experiment result showed that a significant number of participants used the shock generator to its maximum capacity, demonstrating a high degree of submission to authority.

Because Stanley Milgram's Obedience study caused participants psychological distress, criticism and questions were raised pointing to its ethical issues. However, the study still managed to shed light on how common people might act dubiously or immorally when directed by an authority figure, offering insightful information about the influence of authority and social conformity.

# 5. The Hawthorne Effect by Henry A. Landsberger

A phenomenon known as the Hawthorne Effect occurs when people adjust their behavior when they become aware that they are being watched or observed by others. A set of experiments carried out at the Western Electric Hawthorne Works in Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s led to the naming of this effect. The initial purpose of the studies was to look into how worker productivity and lighting conditions relate to one another. Elton Mayo also studied in this context how work structure changes (like rest periods) influenced worked outcomes at the factory.

The data from the Hawthorne studies were later reanalyzed and interpreted in the 1950s by social scientist Henry A. Landsberger. His work, especially the 1958 paper "Hawthorne Revisited," was instrumental in making the Hawthorne Effect concept widely known.

Landsberger came to the conclusion that it was the workers' awareness of being observed/studied that actually explained the observed changes in worker productivity, rather than the lighting conditions as first believed. The workers' motivation and performance improved as a result of the researchers' interest and attention.

From then, the results from Hawthorne Effect study has gained widespread acceptance in organizational behavior psychology and social science. It emphasizes how crucial social and psychological elements are in shaping behavior, especially in settings like research or in the workplace where people may behave differently because they are aware that they are being watched or studied. The Hawthorne Effect is frequently brought up when talking about the difficulties in using human subjects in experiments and research because it can be difficult to identify and comprehend the underlying causes of observed behavior when subjects are aware they are being observed.

# Social Psychology Experiments Today

While these classic experiments helped establish the field of social psychology by studying complex topics like obedience and conformity, today there are more ethical guidelines that researchers must follow.

Furthermore, due to the digitization of the 21st century, online experiments are becoming more and more popular which allow for participants to complete tasks together using their computers or smartphones.

# References

• Asch, S. E. (1952). Group forces in the modification and distortion of judgments. In S. E. Asch, Social psychology (pp. 450–501). Prentice-Hall, Inc.
• Asch, S. E. (1953). Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgements. Group dynamics. Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological monographs: General and applied, 70(9), 1.
• Bandura, A. (1965). Influence of models' reinforcement contingencies on the acquisition of imitative responses. Journal of personality and social psychology, 1(6), 589.
• Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1961). Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63(3), 575.
• Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1963). Imitation of film-mediated aggressive models. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66(1), 3.
• Bandura, A., & Walters, R. H. (1977). Social learning theory(Vol. 1). Prentice Hall: Englewood cliffs.
• Landsberger, H. A. (1958). Hawthorne Revisited: Management and the Worker, Its Critics, and Developments in Human Relations in Industry.
• Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. The Journal of abnormal and social psychology, 67(4), 371.
• Milgram, S. (1965). Some conditions of obedience and disobedience to authority. Human relations, 18(1), 57-76.
• Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). On the ethics of intervention in human psychological research: With special reference to the Stanford prison experiment. Cognition, 2(2), 243–256.
• Zimbardo, P. G. (1995). The psychology of evil: A situationist perspective on recruiting good people to engage in anti-social acts. Japanese Journal of Social Psychology, 11(2), 125-133.

July 29, 2024

Parasocial Relationships Can Tell Us a Lot about the Social Brain

People can form surprisingly strong bonds with others—even when that tie is one-sided

By Daisy Yuhas

Cristina Zamanillo Delgado/Getty Images

Strong relationships are powerfully linked to well-being . But not all social ties are equal. Psychologists who investigate “parasocial relationships” explore the connection people feel with celebrities, social media stars, imaginary friends and fictional characters. These are attachments where you feel you know someone who, in turn, is incapable of knowing you, says social neuroscientist Dylan Wagner of the Ohio State University.

Wagner studies brain activity to better understand how people think about their social connections. In recent years he has shifted his focus toward comparing the relationships people create with fictional and real others. He has found that these relationships resemble and differ from each other in surprising ways—which provides insight into how people connect to stories, the virtual world and one another. Scientific American spoke to Wagner about this research.

[ An edited transcript of the interview follows .]

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You began comparing how we think about fictional and real people by studying Game of Thrones fans. What motivated that work?

After a few years of looking at how the brain learns about other people, we thought it would be interesting to compare how people think about real friends, along with fictional people. For fictional characters, we took advantage of the fact that Game of Thrones has a huge fan base, so it’s relatively easy to find superfans—that meant we could have the same fictional characters across all participants.

We used a task that involved asking people to think about the personality of these characters and about people whom they knew in real life. While they were doing this, we looked at their brain activity using fMRI [functional magnetic resonance imaging], specifically the medial prefrontal cortex. That’s where 20 years of social neuroscience suggests we’ll find this convergence of thinking about yourself, thinking about other people, forming impressions of people, etcetera.

We ran into something that was really intriguing. We found big differences in how much brain activity you see in this region when people are thinking about real versus fictional others. Thinking about fictional characters activates this region a heck of a lot less than thinking about real people. Maybe we should have expected that—but we found it quite surprising.

Why was that so unexpected?

For the longest time, scientists have been using ostensibly fictional characters in research. It’s standard practice in social psychology and neuroscience to study how participants form impressions of people that the experimenters made up. If the brain pushes fictional others into one container while real people are put over here, that’s potentially a problem.

But some characters still provoked a relatively strong response in certain people, right?

That was the second finding. We looked at a measure called trait identification, which combines how likely you are to identify with fictional characters and how transported you are by a story. Basically, some people are more likely to get sucked into a narrative and really imagine the lives and minds of the characters than other people are.

For people who scored high in that trait, the closer they felt to a character, the more likely it was that thinking about the character would elicit a response in the brain that was similar to the response to a real person, like an acquaintance, if not a friend.

In other words, when people really get swept away by a story, fictional characters become more real—even if those characters are riding around on dragons. What influences how immersed we feel in a story?

We’ve looked at several things connected to this trait. We’ve found that people easily transported by stories show brain activity that suggests they watch movies and think about them in a more similar way to one another than people low in that trait.

So when we show them the movie Forrest Gump, for instance, people high in this trait seem to be processing information in the same way over the course of the movie. Afterward, their perceptions of characters are more similar than those of people who are not easily transported by narratives. One way to think of it is that these people are more under the sway of the director. Meanwhile people who are low in this trait don’t seem to process information in the same way as one another or the people who are really immersed in the movie.

Does seeing a fictional character as more “real” influence our behavior?

It could. Some of our other work with fictional characters has more to do with how attached you are or how close you feel to them. If you feel close to someone, are they more persuasive, for example? Does it make you more susceptible to misinformation? Think about influencers. They are real people, but they’re not really friends or acquaintances. They fall into this category called parasocial relationships.

This concept was originally defined as a way of understanding people's relationship with their 6 P.M. newscaster, back in the day when everyone in the U.S. was watching the same TV networks. Today it’s the way many people probably feel about John Oliver. It’s a person or character you don’t really have a real, reciprocal relationship with—but you feel like you see them regularly and know them in the way that’s similar to how you know people in real life.

And actually parasocial relationships have consequences. There’s even a “breakup” effect, where the end of a favorite TV show— such as Friends —makes you feel sad at never being able to see those characters again

As another example, we know that if you’re doing a difficult task, such as solving an anagram, thinking about a real friend improves your performance. It turns out that’s also true when you think of your favorite fictional character . It’s this phenomenon called social facilitation—the idea is that your performance increases perhaps because your attention ramps up in response to this social cue, whether from a real person or someone you feel like you know.

In April a research group published findings that suggest some people feel their parasocial relationships more effectively fulfill emotional needs than in-person acquaintances. Does that mean these relationships substitute for real connections?

I really don’t know how well they can fulfill similar roles to actual friendships. There are a lot of studies we could potentially do.... One trick is that these relationships are not reciprocal: you can’t ask this person for relationship advice or support them through a tough time. But maybe they still give you a sense of belonging.

Through the Game of Thrones experiments, you found that, among lonely people, the differences between how the brain responds to real and fictional others blur . Why would that happen?

We were inspired to look at that question after an amazing paper—put out by Megan Meyer, now at Columbia University—found that when people think about themselves, their friends and celebrities, lonelier people tend to have more idiosyncratic brain activity .

One explanation for our findings, based on the literature, is that lonely people are low in a sense of belongingness. They may turn to fictional characters or TV personalities—and then the fictional character becomes more real.

That said, there’s a whole other possible explanation for our results. It’s possible that the less time you spend with real people, the more those people look like fictional characters.

So real people would be perceived more like fictional ones? How so?

This is just a hypothesis but it’s entirely possible that—as more of us connect with others virtually—real people are getting downgraded and starting to look more like fictional characters in the way that our brain is processing them. If a lonely person’s real friends and acquaintances are less physically present in their life because they primarily connect online, that may push them into the realm of a parasocial relationship.

That’s one of the directions I’d like to go in future research. We are animals, and the full range of your voice, smell, appearance, that’s all being filtered in virtual interaction. It’s possible that a real person’s physical presence ramps up all of these older animal ways of boosting attention. And the result may be that you don’t have the same emotional impact in virtual connection as in physical proximity.

Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about for Mind Matters? Please send suggestions to Scientific American ’s Mind Matters editor Daisy Yuhas at [email protected] .

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

The Psychology of Social Media

In today’s cultural and technological climate, everyone uses some sort of social media. According to a monumental 2018 Pew Research Center study, 88% of respondents between the ages of 18 to 29 reported using some kind of social media. Seventy-eight percent of 30- to 49-year-olds said the same.

The number of reported users dips for the next age group but not as much as you may think. A stunning 64% of people between the ages of 50 and 64 use social media on a frequent basis. For a generation that didn’t grow up with the internet or social media, this statistic is surprising and helps explain the prevalence of social media use in our culture.

With the pervasiveness of social media across all ages, more attention needs to be given to what it’s doing to us as individual users. The endless stream of communication and connection provided by social media is changing the way we think and absorb information. As it is, people are currently developing social media habits that can simultaneously benefit and harm their mental health. The question being, what does social media do to your brain?

Because this trend of extended social media use will only continue, more researchers are joining the field to analyze and understand the psychology of social media in our constantly connected culture.

Social Media and The Brain

From a neurological perspective, social media affects different brain functions in unique ways. It contains many combinations of stimuli that can trigger different reactions, and because of this, social media’s effects on the brain appear in a variety of ways.

Positive attention on social media, for example, affects multiple parts of the brain. According to an article in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience , accruing likes on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram causes “activation in brain circuity implicated in reward , including the striatum and ventral tegmental area, regions also implicated in the experience of receiving Likes from others.” This sounds really complicated and involved, but when approached from a different perspective, it becomes a little more digestible.

The ventral tegmental area (VTA) is one of the primary parts responsible for determining the rewards system in people’s bodies. When social media users receive positive feedback (likes), their brains fire off dopamine receptors, which is facilitated in part by the VTA.

Another study that employed the use of MRI technology to monitor brain activity found similar results. As researchers analyzed the brains of adolescents browsing Instagram, they found that “viewing photos with many (compared with few) likes was associated with greater activity in neural regions implicated in reward processing, social cognition, imitation, and attention.”

Again, with social media so tightly connected to individuals’ rewards systems, users should realize the power – and possibility for abuse – of the platforms they use. Things like gambling and narcotic drugs have the power to rule over the brain’s rewards system in a similar capacity. Social media users should be aware of these parallels to avoid potential pitfalls.

Outside of the rewards systems, social media stimuli can affect the brain’s decision-making and emotional processing functions. In yet another study that observed the brain activity in adolescents, researchers found that parts of the brain that deal with emotional and sensory processing reacted noticeably when participants felt excluded . This study highlighted the effects of “online social exclusion” on the developing brains of adolescents. What this means is that when social media users are excluded from online groups, chats, or events, the brain reacts in these specific regions directly.

The research on social media and how the parts of the brain react to it is still in the early stages. While these studies reflect an effort toward better understanding the effects of social media on different parts of the brain, there’s still a lot of progress to be made. Social media is growing by leaps and bounds and these studies are helping us identify more about why people post on social media.

Why We Post on Social Media

People choose different material to post on different social media platforms. When people want to post pictures, they tend to pick Instagram. When they want to post short bits of text like jokes, they go to Twitter. So much goes into deciding what to post where, and that’s not even including the psychological factors that determine what gets posted and what doesn’t.

Psychological Motivations for Posting

Pinpointing exactly why people post is an impossible exercise. However, by understanding some significant social media behaviors, it becomes easier to grasp general motivations for posting.

A recent Medium article titled “The Psychology of Social Sharing” helped articulate the different tiers of posting motivations. While the writers for this article approached the psychology of posting on social media from a marketing perspective, they tapped into clear psychological incentives for sharing content. They even cleverly adapt noted psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs to reasons why people post and consume updates. They are:

• Physiological needs: People sometimes post to benefit the health or well-being of their friends and family.
• Safety: Physical, mental, and financial security are important for people when they choose to post some material on their social media.
• Love/belonging: Users generally want to post to feel some kind of social acceptance from a group or a particular individual.
• Esteem: People want to quell the rewards-oriented parts of their brains, which helps explain why people post “me-centric” content regularly.
• Self-actualization: As the most important facet of the human needs hierarchy, this aspect of social media posting manifests when people share their successes – getting a new job, completing an arduous project, or graduating from school, to name a few examples.

The psychological world has only recently begun to confront the motivations for posting material on social media. An article titled “Why We Share: A Study of Motivations for Mobile Media Sharing” posed an actual experiment where respondents were asked to record their posting habits and corresponding feelings in a diary and then participate in post-study interviews. After monitoring the media sharing behavior, the researchers found “that social and emotional influences played an important role in media sharing behavior.”

Some researchers have looked toward the ways social media has affected the psychological development in children. The article “Growing Up Wired: Social Networking Sites and Adolescent Psychosocial Development” stated that some reasons people share is because they have been reared since childhood to post. The researchers said:

Overall, adolescents and young adults’ stated motivations for using (social networking sites) are quite similar to more traditional forms of communication – to stay in touch with friends, make plans, get to know people better, and present oneself to others.

Moreover, the researchers in the study explained that children and adolescents are beginning to have their identities shaped by posting on and engaging with social media.

One reason people post on social media, according to an article in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , is because social media sharing can link to positive social media feedback and self-esteem. More directly, the quest for likes or follows on social media heavily influences why people post. The positive attention some users receive for posting inspires more and more social sharing in many users.

In sum, people generally post from some kind of emotional position that seeks a response. Since the very nature of social media centers on communication, it makes sense that the primary motivation for posting comes from a psychological point to connect with others. But this constant quest for acceptance and exposure on social media can lead to major psychological problems for some.

Interested in finding out more about how social media affects brain function? Want to know more about the positive and negative effects of social media on mental health? Download our free guide to start learning about social media psychology today!

When Social Media Habits Turn to Social Media Addictions

Social media dependency has received more and more consideration in the last five years. The boom of social networking applications has caused many researchers to explore not only why people post the content they choose to share, but also the addictive tendencies in some users.

Specifically, the article “Social Networking Sites and Addiction” pinpointed some reasons people become addicted to social networking sites (SNS). These reasons include lower self-esteem and a general anxiety about being excluded.

The authors were quick to make the distinction between social networking and social media, though, since “social networking is a way of being” while “individuals can become addicted to using social networking sites.” They extend social media addiction to connect more clearly to smartphone addiction, and that levels of addiction may depend of sociodemographic information. Further, the researchers conclude that the fear of missing out (FOMO) “may be part of SNS addiction.” These are all significant features of how people are more and more inclined to post on or consume social media because of an underlying addictive behavior problem.

Social media addiction is gaining traction in the academic world because a growing number of people are reporting problems of dependence. The article “The Relations Among Social Media Addiction, Self-Esteem, and Life Satisfaction in University Students” detailed a study that explored the consequences of excessive social media use. In it, respondents who reported a moderate use of social media had a much more positive outlook on their social positions. Other participants overwhelmingly reported “addictive use of social media had a negative association with self-esteem.” These same respondents in the survey said they lacked satisfaction with their lives, which they directly linked to their lowered self-esteem.

Moreover, the chapter “Social Networking Addiction” from Behavioral Addictions contextualized the significance of social media addiction in a world where it hasn’t been researched as much as it should . The chapter explored more directly ways that mental health professionals can conduct effective screening and treatment processes in response to users suspected of having addictive tendencies.

Though this chapter does a good job of providing impressive prospective frameworks for screening and treatment responses, a lot more work needs to be done to confront the problem directly. In order to unpack the psychology of social media more comprehensively, a closer look into preventative measures needs to be taken.

Understanding the Change in Self Concept from Using Social Media

Social media allows users to express their personalities in unique ways. But the ability to create multiple accounts and to curate the material on their profiles has given users an unprecedented opportunity to develop new personae. These new digital identities can align with, be a complement to, or conflict with users’ real personalities.

How Social Media Shapes Identity

In order to understand more clearly how social media shapes individuals’ identities, it’s necessary first to look at the landscape of social media.

The article “Psychology of Social Media: From Technology to Identity” stated the spatial makeups of hybridized social media networks has given a “rise to ‘interreality,’ a new social space, more malleable and dynamic than preceding social networks.” Out of these new frameworks, people now:

• Alter their own social identities.
• Change the ways others perceive them through curated social media profiles.
• Use social media tools to expand their own social connections.
• Have their real identities concealed by virtual ones.

As a result of this power through new social media technology, users are in some ways able to have much greater control over their identity formations. The researchers warned, however, that social media tools should be used by older, more mature people because, when “it’s used in an irresponsible way by people who are too young, they can cause problems and difficulties that in some cases even time cannot erase.”

From a social media psychology standpoint, this new ability to control one’s own identity formation is as empowering as it is alarming. Users can build their identities on social media as honest representations of their personalities and traits, and at the same time, they can also create entirely new social media personae. This power has impressive advantages and severe consequences.

The Effects of Self-Perception on Social Media

Social media users’ self-image is put under a microscope when they constantly compare their situations with others. And these comparisons happen frequently when they engage with each other. Matthew Pittman and Brandon Reich, both media specialists and academics, have found that people can sharpen their own identities when they engage in intimate, image-oriented social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest.

They stated that “quantitative results suggest that loneliness may decrease , while happiness and satisfaction with life may increase, as a function of image-based social media use. In contrast, text-based media use appears ineffectual.” As a result, some users have greater confidence and a stronger self-perception on social media in image-oriented environments.

On the other hand, social media can also motivate people who view themselves negatively to build entirely new identities. The thinking here, though not always malicious, is to trick others into thinking they’re someone else. In the context of social media dating services, this practice is known as catfishing. According to Scientific American, “Users may feel pressured to alter (height, weight, and age) information to present what they perceive is their ideal self and maximize their attractiveness .” Social media has created an environment where users feel pressured to either lie or fabricate their physical and psychological identities to become more desirable.

These pressures extend far beyond the dating world and into many other facets of social media interactions. The vulnerabilities of some social media users more generally can lead to a “ false Facebook -self.” According to the study “The ‘Facebook-self’: characteristics and psychological predictors of false self-presentation on Facebook,” researchers were able to highlight that people with low self-esteem on social media were much more likely to create alternate, sometimes conflicting Facebook personas.

Social Pressures to Fit into Social Media Groups

A huge incentive to use social media stems from the acceptance users can receive from various groups. As with practically all aspects of social media, this group-focused direction of social media has benefits and drawbacks.

One major benefit for social media users is they can reach out to and connect with groups of people with similar interests across the planet. People can find more information about niche hobbies, popular pastimes, and general interests. This ability to belong to different groups is excellent for people coming from smaller or distant communities, and the psychological advantages for those individuals are immense.

According to Art Markman of Psychology Today, belonging to a group can dramatically improve a person’s drive to complete tasks. Specifically, he stated “that even a simple relationship between people based on arbitrary reasons, like sharing a birthday or being randomly assigned to a group, is enough to increase feelings of warmth and motivation.” Social media, thus, offers opportunities for people to form groups for both general and specific interests, which can help improve their overall productivity.

On the other hand, belonging to a group too closely or intimately can change the way the typical social media user thinks and behaves. The academic journal Media Psychology recently published a study that found that when users keep to their social media groups, they begin to mimic the behaviors of those groups. This mimicry results in a social media identity bubble that’s reinforced by prolonged engagement with the group.

Social Media and Mental Health

Outside of the ability to dominate emotional and mental states, social media platforms have the power to influence, either positively or negatively, the psychological behaviors of people. Social media can dramatically help to improve users’ mental health, but at the same time, it can negatively impact people’s psychological well-being.

Mental Health Benefits from Social Media

Though many researchers focus on the cons of social media use, there are several potential mental wellness advantages. The advantages extend across demographics and appear in unexpected ways.

For millennials, who tend to dominate some spheres of social media consumption, the digital world of social sharing poses several mental health and relationship benefits. Psychologists Adriana M. Manago and Lanen Vaughn found there are ample opportunities for friendship and happiness as younger people transition to adulthood. Specifically, they said younger social media users can now create stronger bonds with friends because of the easy access to friends’ information and interests.

Further, they found these connections give users an opportunity for greater independence and autonomy, which increases their critical thinking and decision-making abilities. These feelings of community and self-worth will palpably improve the mental health of users over the course of time.

The organization Painted Brain, which combats mental health hardships through advocacy, artistic expression, and business, outlined the ways social media can positively affec t the mental health of users. From a psychological standpoint, they found many positive effects of social media on mental health, such as:

• Social integration with similar interest groups.
• Healthy and body-positive lifestyle motivations.
• The availability of support groups.
• Maintaining and building new relationships.
• An introduction into new modes of thinking.

Mental Health Consequences from Social Media Use

While there certainly are tangible benefits to social media consumption and engagement, it’s been rightly critiqued for its tendency to have toxic effects on users’ mental health.

This kind of anxiety manifests much more severely in teens. As licensed clinical social worker Katie Hurley found, teens online must “confront cyberbullying, trolls, toxic comparisons, sleep deprivation, and less frequent face-to-face interactions.” In a cultural moment that stresses the importance of staying online all the time, these seemingly disconnected issues can overwhelm users and result in profound anxiety. These negative effects on teens’ mental health illustrates the need for parents, educators, and other role models to build better models for social media engagement.

Further, according to a scholarly article published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology , higher levels of depression correlate with Facebook use. The study found the subjects’ mental health suffered with the more time they spent on Facebook, causing users to feel worse about their own positions when they compared their profiles with others.

Another article by medical doctor and cyberpsychologist Igor Pantic echoed the finding . He stated that “prolonged use of social networking sites, such as Facebook, may be related to signs and symptoms of depression.” As people compare their lives to so many others, they will only find their mental health continue to deteriorate.

The Implications of Social Media Psychology

The field of social media psychology has only existed for the past 10 to 15 years, which coincides directly with the rise of social media. As a result, the research being conducted is still in its early stages. In nearly all the scholarly articles featured in this guide, researchers mentioned on the limitations of their own methods so that future studies could explore them further.

Because there are so many gaps in the existing research, new perspectives need to join the field. According to Atlantic contributor and psychologist of 20 years Jean M. Twenge, people need to become much more aware of the consequences of social media dependence for the sake of our children’s future . “What’s at stake isn’t just how kids experience adolescence,” she said. “The constant presence of smartphones is likely to affect them well into adulthood.”

You can respond to and help solve this overarching problem by continuing your education in the field. There are many levels of career paths in psychology that offer different research opportunities, depending on your own professional and personal preferences. An online B.S. in Psychology will prepare you to analyze and understand the psychological effects of social media on users by studying social psychology , group dynamics, and more.

Gain greater insight on how social media influences, both positively and negatively, the psychology of users with King University Online’s psychology degree. Our program is taught by trained and decorated faculty who will prepare you for a successful future. With year-round course availability and a generous credit transfer policy, you may be able to earn your degree in as little as 16 months.

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Behind every good, straight man is a sexually satisfied woman.

In the US alone approximately 30 million men are living with erectile dysfunction while an estimated 2 out of every 100 American males is not producing testosterone within a typical healthy range, a condition known as male hypogonadism. Fortunately, drugs like Viagra [sildenafil] and testosterone supplements have for decades helped men with ED and low testosterone achieve more satisfying sex lives.

However, a new study, published in the  Archives of Sexual Behavior , explored how the use of these libido-enhancing therapies affects society’s perception of their masculinity. Ultimately, psychology researchers at Pennsylvania Western University, Edinboro found that these drugs mattered little as long as their ladies achieved orgasm.

The findings also showed that men who use Viagra [sildenafil] or testosterone injections recreationally — without an underlying medical cause — were seen as no more masculine than men who use them to treat erectile dysfunction and low T, even when they, too, consistently brought their female partner to orgasm.

The study shed light on the so-called “self-reliance rule of masculinity,” a trend in sexual health research that suggests males are seen as more manly when they don’t need help to achieve erection, and, crucially, please their female partner.

“Female partner orgasm served to ‘rescue’ social perceptions of masculinity lost to a low level of testosterone,” researchers wrote in their report.

The study involved two experiments, one which focused on Viagra use and the other on testosterone.

The first test recruited 522 participants — 54% men and 46% women with an average age of 32.2 years — to read one of eight randomly assigned sexual vignettes. The stories involved a man engaging in sexual activity three times with the same woman who either reached climax every time or not at all. Scenarios varied on whether the male character was identified as someone with ED or who takes Viagra.

After reading, participants rated the hypothetical man on his masculinity and sexual esteem.

The second test involved 711 participants and a similar set of 12 stories, this time describing a man with low, normal, or high natural testosterone, and whether he took the hormone supplamentally. Again, the women in the stories either reached orgasm every time or never. Finally, participants assessed their assigned story’s demonstration of masculinity and sexual esteem.

In both cases, the female orgasm was identified as the most influential factor, regardless of whether the man suffered ED and low T, and took drugs for it.

While men without ED or low T were generally viewed as more masculine, the presence of the female orgasm helped close that gap for men with such conditions — and that using these drugs to enhance performance, particularly when they’re not medically necessary, had no positive association with perceived manliness.

The Psychology of Social Anxiety

The socially anxious are themselves their most hardened and destructive critics..

Posted December 28, 2020 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

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There’s not always a lot of socializing going on in social anxiety , but there’s certainly a lot of thinking. People with social anxiety appear to have developed some very biased ways of thinking that maintain the anxiety over time.

Let’s begin with a simple demonstration. U.K. clinical psychologist Warren Mansell and colleagues conducted a very simple experiment with participants who were either high or low on measures of social anxiety. Each participant was asked to make a three-minute speech on a controversial topic to a TV monitor that they believed displayed six people who were watching their performance live. Two audience members exhibited only positive behaviours during the speech (nodding, leaning forward, smiling), two audience members exhibited only negative behaviours (yawning, looking around, shaking head), and the remaining two exhibited only neutral behaviours (adjusting seat position, playing with a pen).

After the speeches, the high social anxiety participants reported that overall the audience had judged their performance significantly more negatively than the low socially anxious participants. More specifically, high socially anxious participants were selectively attending to audience members who were negatively evaluating them. The researchers concluded that socially anxious individuals may base their judgments of being disapproved by others on limited processing of their social environment[1]—namely a biased processing that overfocuses on potentially negative information about their performance.

The heads of the socially anxious seem to be full of negative biases of this kind. This leads to excessively negative predictions about future social events, and this biased evaluation helps to support social avoidance behaviours. They are more likely to interpret ambiguous social information negatively and interpret their own performances in social situations significantly more critically than non-sufferers and independent assessors who have objectively observed and rated their performance[2]. They themselves are their most hardened and destructive critics.

In addition, the socially anxious have a genuine block when it comes to receiving and processing positive social feedback, and have an inability to take anything "good" from a social performance[3]. These information-processing biases make it almost inevitable that the socially anxious are going to negatively evaluate themselves and their performance in social situations and severely underestimate their own social skills—self-judgments that are all grist to the mill of beating yourself up and avoiding the next social interaction.

So what facilitates this almost single-minded focus on negativity and poor self-evaluation? Well, socially anxious individuals tend to shift their focus of attention inwards onto themselves and their own anxiety when in social situations. I can remember many examples of this from my own youth. On one school speech day, I had to walk from the audience on to the stage to receive my prize. As far as I was concerned, I felt like a condemned man walking towards the hangman’s gibbet. The stage was an unfocused blur and all I could feel was a pair of wobbly legs taking me step by every tortuous step up the aisle nearer to what I felt was about to be a social catastrophe in a swelteringly hot assembly hall.

As it happened, it wasn’t a social catastrophe. I picked up my prize and shook hands with the distinguished somebody who was there to make the day important. But afterwards, I vowed never to do that again because everyone must have seen me wobbling tentatively towards the stage on shaking legs and with a brow soaked in anxious sweat. But everyone I spoke to afterward said they didn’t see anything unusual. I wasn’t a quivering jelly, I wasn’t covered in sweat, and I didn’t look anxious … but I didn’t believe them. From my perspective, I was a walking embarrassment .

This shift of attention inwards in socially anxious individuals is known as self-focused attention and leads those who are socially anxious to believe they may look as anxious as they feel inside[4]. It’s interesting that those with social anxiety often recall social memories from an observer perspective rather than a personal perspective.

In one study, socially anxious individuals were asked to recall a recent specific occasion when they felt anxious and uncomfortable in a social situation. They were allowed 30 seconds to image the scene and then given the following instruction: “Thinking about the image you’ve just had, is your predominant impression one of viewing the situation as if looking through your eyes, observing the details of what is going on around you or is the predominant impression one in which you are observing yourself as if you were outside yourself looking at yourself from an external point of view?”

In memories of social situations, the socially anxious reported a marked observer perspective whereas non-socially anxious individuals took a field perspective (seeing the situation as if looking through their own eyes)[5]. Interestingly, my own memory of that school speech day is very much from an observer perspective—I’m hovering above the assembled throng watching myself walk unsteadily and anxiously up the aisle towards the stage. This rather odd perspective-taking is almost certainly a post-event mental construction (no one has yet convinced me that I can actually hover above crowds taking images of the scene below like a camera drone). If you’re fully focused only on your internal reactions, you’ll have no sensory memory of the external features of the social event for your own physical perspective—only memories of your own feelings. It’s presumably from these anxious feelings that I constructed my observer-based perspective of an anxious perspiring figure hopelessly staggering through the lines of assembled parents attempting to reach the stage without any embarrassing mishap. A perspective seemingly not shared by anyone else in the audience.

Self-focused attention in social situations is itself a cause of anxiety, facilitates negative thoughts during the social interaction, and generates an expectation that others will rate you more negatively—and this occurs in both adults and children[6]. So switching to a self-focused mode is only likely to increase the severity of any anxiety feelings you have at the time.

Finally, even when the social interaction is over, the socially anxious individual can’t leave it alone. If it’s not bad enough predicting bad things happening prior to a social interaction and then focusing on anxious feelings during the event, the socially anxious person will then ruminate on their performance excessively after the event. After each significant social interaction, socially anxious individuals become their very own highly critical appraisal manager. They indulge in excessive post-event processing of social events that includes critical self-appraisal and an assessment of the severity of their anxiety symptoms—a process that has the effect of maintaining negative appraisals of performance over time and maintaining social anxiety[7].

This concatenation of cognitive and information processing biases has a monumental effect on anyone who is socially anxious. It maintains the predominant focus on feelings of anxiety during social events, generates highly critical self-evaluations of performance, prevents the processing of positive feedback, and spawns hours of ruminative negative thought about previous social interactions—all of which feed the anxiety beast itself, maintaining social anxiety and supporting active avoidance of social situations. But because we’ve been able to identify each of these different elements contributing to social anxiety, the shining ray of positive light here is that we can develop effective cognitive-based interventions to help manage each of them and significantly reduce the symptoms of social anxiety, and many of these techniques are already being deployed by therapists and organizations offering CBT services[8].

[1] Perowne S & Mansell W (2002) Social anxiety, self-focussed attention, and the discrimination of negative, neutral and positive audience members by their nonverbal behaviours. Behavioural & Cognitive Psychotherapy, 30, 11-23.

[2] Dodd, H.F., Hudson, J.L., Lyneham, H.J., Wuthrich, V.M., Morris, T. & Monier, L. (2011). Self-ratings and observer-ratings of social skill: A manipulation of state social anxiety in anxious and non-anxious children. Journal of Experimental Psychopathology, 2(4), 571—585.

[3] Alden, L.E., Mellings, T.M.B. & Laposa, J.M. (2004). Framing social information and generalized social phobia. Behaviour Research and Therapy 42(5), 585—600.

[4] Spurr, J.M. & Stopa, L. (2002). Self-focused attention in social phobia and social anxiety. Clinical Psychology Review, 22, 947—975.

[5] Wells A, Clark DM & Ahmad S (1998) How do I look with my minds eye: perspective taking in social phobic imagery. Behaviour Research & Therapy, 36, 631-634.

[6] Kley H, Tuschen-Caffier B & Heinrichs N (2011) Manipulating self-focussed attention in children with social anxiety disorder and in socially anxious and non-anxious children. Journal of Experimental Psychopathology, 2, 551-570.

[7] Rachman, S., Gruter-Andrew, J. & Shafran, R. (2000). Post-event processing in social anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 38(6), 611—617.

[8] https://www.div12.org/psychological-treatments/disorders/social-phobia-…

Graham C. L. Davey, Ph.D., is an expert in anxiety and a professor of psychology at the University of Sussex.

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Opinion: Professor Arie Kruglanski Explores the Psychology Behind Shootings in America

In a new piece for Psychology Today, Distinguished University Professor Arie Kruglanski of the Department of Psychology delves into the psychology behind shootings in the United States.

These violent acts, he says, are carried out because the perpetrators are seeking a sense of significance.

Read More in Psychology Today

Photo by John T. Consoli/University of Maryland 

Published on Tue, Jul 23, 2024 - 10:09AM

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An Escalating War in the Middle East

Tensions are on a knife edge after israel carried out a strike on the hezbollah leader allegedly behind an attack in the golan heights..

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Warning: This episode contains audio of war.

Over the past few days, the simmering feud between Israel and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, has reached a critical moment.

Ben Hubbard, the Istanbul bureau chief for The New York Times, explains why the latest tit-for-tat attacks are different and why getting them to stop could be so tough.

On today’s episode

Ben Hubbard , the Istanbul bureau chief for The New York Times.

Background reading

Israel says it killed a Hezbollah commander , Fuad Shukr, in an airstrike near Beirut.

The Israeli military blamed Mr. Shukr for an assault on Saturday that killed 12 children and teenagers in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

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