Via Research Digest.
Attempts to explore the issue through replication have stalled in recent decades because of concerns the experiment could be distressing for participants. Jerry Burger at Santa Clara University found a partial solution to this problem in a 2009 study, after he realised that 79 per cent of Milgram's participants who went beyond the 150-volt level (at which the 'learner' was first heard to call out in distress) subsequently went on to apply the maximum lethal shock level of 450 volts, almost as if the 150-volt level were a point of no return [further information]. Burger conducted a modern replication up to the 150-volt level and found that a similar proportion of people (70 per cent) were willing to go beyond this point as were willing to do so in the 1960s (82.5 per cent). Presumably, most of these participants would have gone all the way to 450 volts level had the experiment not been stopped short.
Now Burger and his colleagues have studied the utterances made by the modern-day participants during the 2009 partial-replication, and afterwards during de-briefing. They found that participants who expressed a sense that they were responsible for their actions were the ones least likely to go beyond the crucial 150-volt level. Relevant to this is that Milgram's participants (and Burger's) were told, if they asked, that responsibility for any harm caused to the learner rested with the experimenter.
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