09/11/2025
So I didn't know the whole story of where she was going with this (another thought provoking creator to follow) but at some point, I want to lean into how commonplace emotional and psychological abuse and neglect are and how our cultural standards and systems teach us not to listen to ourselves from an early age. How the expectation of compliance from an early age leaves us vulnerable to both being abused and becoming abusive.
- Shay Malone
This is the Milgram Experiment.
And I think it, and the uncomfortable lessons it claimed to teach us, should be your next rabbit hole.
Let’s talk about one of the most disturbing, and most misunderstood, studies in psychology:
✴️ In 1961, psychologist Stanley Milgram at Yale University wanted to explore how far ordinary people would go in obeying authority even if it meant harming someone.
Participants were told they were helping with a study on learning and memory. They were assigned the role of “teacher,” while another person (actually an actor) played the “learner,” strapped into what appeared to be an electric chair.
✴️ The “teacher” was instructed to administer increasingly severe electric shocks whenever the learner answered incorrectly. The shocks were fake — but the screams, banging on the wall, and pleas to stop were scripted to sound painfully real.
As the voltage increased, a man in a lab coat calmly urged the participant to continue: “Please go on.” “The experiment requires that you continue.”
✴️ Two-thirds of participants went all the way to the maximum 450 volts, a level labeled “###: Danger- Severe Shock.”
Most showed visible distress: sweating, trembling, stammering. But they kept going, obeying the authority figure despite believing they were inflicting real pain.
✴️ When results were published, the world was horrified and fascinated. The study was seen as proof that ordinary people could commit atrocities if ordered to by authority. Milgram connected his findings to the Holocaust, arguing that “obedience to authority” explained how people became complicit in genocide.
That framing helped make him famous but it also helped oversimplify evil.
✴️ Decades later, researchers revisiting Milgram’s tapes and archives found a more complicated story. Many participants doubted the setup was real. Some refused early but were persuaded, guilted, or manipulated into continuing.
Milgram himself edited his footage and cherry-picked data to dramatize obedience while minimizing resistance.
What we were shown wasn’t the full picture, it was edited compliance.
Why I think this is important:
Because the Milgram Experiment didn’t reveal people’s willingness to obey, it revealed academia’s willingness to manipulate narratives about human behavior.
It told us that obedience was human nature, not something taught through culture, hierarchy, and fear of punishment.
It also reinforced the idea that atrocities are products of orders, not ideology… which conveniently protects authority from accountability and excuses complicity In atrocities.
Milgram’s experiment wasn’t just about obedience. It was about how easy it is for power to redefine what “obedience” means, and to turn psychological theater into scientific truth.
The real lesson isn’t that people are naturally cruel when told to be. It’s that power (especially white institutional power) will always find a way to rebrand coercion into a moral defense for depravity.
That’s why the Milgram Experiment is your next rabbit hole.
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