80% of people would submit to authority? Not that easy

• Based on the experiment created by Stanley Milgram, publications, seen almost a million times on Facebook, claim that “80% of the population does not have the psychological resources to defy the order of an authority”.

• The American psychologist conducted his experiments in the early 1960s. He showed that up to two-thirds of participants agreed to subject a human to life-threatening electric shocks.

• If the phenomenon of obedience has been established, Stanley Milgram's interpretation of it is challenged by new studies, such as that of the robot fish in France.

Are we mostly sheep?

And would there be only a valiant minority to resist?

This is essentially the content of viral posts on Facebook, viewed almost a million times.

Starting from the experiment created by Stanley Milgram, it is affirmed that “80% of the population does not have the psychological resources to defy the order of an authority”, regardless of the latter's illegitimacy.

“As a result, the post estimates, only 20% have the ability to think critically.

“And to strike:” This explains that.

"It explains the number of sheep who went to be injected with a product never used in the general population", supports a user in comment, when others recall that the Milgram experiment does not lead to this conclusion.

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Conducted in the early 1960s, Stanley Milgram's experiments – there were more than twenty protocols – cannot in fact be reduced to this simplification.

During his experiments, the American psychologist ordered a sample of 1,000 people to make a man suffer for so-called scientific research on learning.

Each time this student (actually an actor) made mistakes during a word association exercise, the people had to subject him to a (simulated) electric shock that got stronger and stronger, in increments of 15 volts.

Among the different protocols, at most 65% – not 80% – of the participants agreed to go up to 450 volts, a potentially fatal shock.

These experiments have become a classic in social psychology and have since been carried out in a dozen countries such as Australia, South Africa and France.

Between 1967 and 1985, the submission rate fluctuated between 28 and 91% in other studies, according to an article by Thomas Blass, professor of social psychology at the University of Michigan.

“A kind of state in which the individual becomes subject to an authority”

His research led the Yale University psychologist to conceive of submission to authority in a book of the same name published in 1974. He explains it as "a kind of state in which the individual suspends adherence to its standards, becomes subject to immediate authority by carrying out orders, considering that it is not responsible for them", explains Laurent Begue-Shankland, professor of social psychology at the University of Grenoble, who himself has carried out a study of this type in France.

In his essay, Stanley Milgram shows that authority is ultimately responsible for the situation.

He speaks of an "agentic state", where "the individual is the agent of a higher authority and relieves himself of responsibility", sums up Laurent Begue-Shankland.

Milgram wanted to understand how ordinary people could be driven to commit atrocities, such as those perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II.

A disputed interpretation

The words of the viral post mentioned above "do not make sense" outside the experimental context set up by Milgram, believes Laurent Begue-Shankland.

"You just have to change an element of the context to have different rates," he says.

We absolutely cannot extrapolate this statistic to other subjects in other contexts.

For example, the 65% submission rate occurs when the subject does not see the victim, but only hears it.

It drops to 30% when the participants have to hold the victim's arm to receive the electric shock and to 21% when the instructions are given by telephone.

While the phenomenon of obedience has been established, Stanley Milgram's interpretation of it has been challenged by later studies.

“We can say that human beings are sensitive to the injunctions of authority, that they have a deep disposition to consider it and sometimes to follow it, maintains Laurent Begue-Shankland.

But we are not robots and many parameters come into play.

»

Methodological flaws

In 2013, an Australian psychologist, Gina Perry, wrote a book exposing the flaws in Milgram's methodology.

In an interview with

, she considers that it is “extremely difficult to draw any conclusion” from these experiences.

"Rather than submitting blindly, as Milgram seemed to think, they seek to negotiate their participation, discuss with the experimenter (the one who plays the role of scientist in a white coat), adds Laurent Begue-Shankland to

.

They seek to avoid hurting the victim, sometimes trying to cheat so that it does not suffer shocks.

They are actively involved, and while they obey, they ultimately obey much less blindly than Milgram seemed to think.

»

Moreover, by studying the archives of Milgram and its recordings, it was possible to notice that the participants considered that they were responsible for what they had done.

They were "intensely relieved" after learning that the experiment was a simulation, traced Laurent Begue-Shankland in

.

New perspectives like with the robot fish

In 2014, in the scientific journal

, researchers dissected the conditions of these experiments to determine their degree of importance, between the legitimacy granted to authority, more or less authoritarian interventions by the scientist, proximity to the person who receives the shocks.

"Although the meanings [of the experiences] remain elusive and continue to spark disagreement, attempts at clarification remain important," they said.

To open up new perspectives, therefore, Laurent Begue-Shankland renewed Milgram's research in 2021 with his experience of the robot fish, told in

.

In a new protocol, he asked nearly 750 participants to administer a toxic product to a fish (actually a biomimetic robot) in twelve times in order to determine its harmfulness in the context of the development of a new drug.

At the end of the sixth dose, the fish had a 50% risk of dying, which the participants were informed of.

The role of perceived authority

He was thus able to work on the role played by personality traits: people with a low level of empathy, or for whom there is a strong hierarchy between human groups, are more inclined to distribute more toxic substances to fish .

The main objective was to find out how far a person is willing to go in the name of scientific research.

"It may seem like a subtlety, but in reality, it makes it possible to consider that the individual who is influenced by authority is not going completely against his will, there is a certain legitimacy that he grants him", specifies- he.

This idea could be studied by a sheet proposed to the participants in the preamble of the experiment.

All while conditioning them: in the proscience condition, they were asked how important science was to them.

In the critical science condition, they were asked to write down what they didn't like about science.

“People who have been initiated in a proscientific way will go further, notes Laurent Begue-Shankland.

What modulates the submission to authority is the perception that the participants have of the ends of the experience, of the goal and not only the immediate pressure of the authority which would be blindly at the origin of obedience. , he concludes.

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