Theory & Psychology
2015, Vol. 25(5) 564­–580
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0959354315601231
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Coverage of recent criticisms
of Milgram’s obedience
experiments in introductory
social psychology textbooks
Richard A. Griggs
University of Florida
George I. Whitehead III
Salisbury University
Abstract
This article has two purposes: (a) to broaden awareness of recent criticisms of Milgram’s obedience
experiments by providing a relatively inclusive review of them interlaced within a discussion of
Gina Perry’s main substantive criticisms and (b) to report the findings of our coverage analysis
for recent criticisms in current introductory social psychology textbooks. Past coverage analyses
have found a “Milgram-friendly” trend (little or no discussion or even acknowledgment of the
large body of criticism published from 1964 onward) that evolved in textbooks from the 1960s to
the 1990s and has become more pronounced since that time period. Our findings on coverage of
recent criticisms were consistent with those of past text analyses. None of the recent criticisms
were covered, even in the social psychology textbooks dated 2015. We discuss a possible
explanation for these findings that involves a proposed knowledge-conserving function of social
psychology textbooks.
Keywords
Milgram obedience experiments, social psychology textbooks, textbook analysis
Arguably, the most famous (or infamous) set of experiments in psychology is Milgram’s
obedience experiments (Milgram, 1963, 1964, 1965a, 1965b, 1974). The 50th anniversary
of Milgram’s first major publication about the obedience experiments (Milgram,
1963) recently occurred in 2013. Surprisingly, according to Web of Science, the annual
Corresponding author:
Richard A. Griggs, 4515 Breakwater Row West, Jacksonville, FL 32225, USA.
Email: rgriggs@ufl.edu
601231TAP0010.1177/0959354315601231Theory & PsychologyGriggs and Whitehead III
research-article2015
Article
Griggs and Whitehead III	 565
rate of citation to Milgram’s 1963 article has risen significantly in recent years, especially
from 2007 through 2012 (Reicher, Haslam, & Miller, 2014; see Figure 1, p. 395).
This finding supports Gibson’s (2013b) assertion with respect to the obedience experiments
that the “debate surrounding the ethical, theoretical, and empirical issues they
raise shows no signs of abating” (p. 177). Much of this recent interest in the Milgram
experiments is concerned with presenting new criticisms of the obedience experiments,
such as Milgram’s misrepresentation of the debriefing process used in the experiments
(e.g., Nicholson, 2011), but even some older criticisms, such as the unethical nature of
Milgram’s experimental paradigm, have been renewed (e.g., Baumrind, 2013). Most of
these new criticisms of Milgram’s experiments are based on analyses of the Stanley
Milgram Papers in the Manuscripts and Archives section of Yale’s Sterling Memorial
Library. We will discuss these recent criticisms, focusing on those proffered by Gina
Perry (2013a) because they are the most extensive.1 Discussion of some other recent,
related critiques of the obedience experiments will be interwoven within the summary of
Perry’s main critical points. A discussion of our examination of how current introductory
social psychology textbooks have dealt with these recent criticisms will follow our
examination of recent criticisms.
Perry’s main criticisms
Over the course of four years through her review of the Yale archival materials, including
140 audio recordings of the original experiments, scores of participant debriefing conversations
with a psychiatrist, and the documentation, notes, and correspondence accumulated
during the study, and her personal interviews with former participants, experts
familiar with the research, and relatives of the men who served as the experimenter and
learner in the experiments, Perry (2013a) found serious methodological and ethical problems
with Milgram’s experiments. In an excellent summary of Perry’s findings, Brannigan
(2013) describes Perry’s conclusions as “disturbing” and thinks that they will “fundamentally
challenge the way scholars interpret Milgram and his experiments” (p. 624).
The experimenter’s improvisational, extended prodding
Perry (2013a) found that Milgram’s depiction of the experimental procedure with respect
to the experimenter’s use of prods to coax participants to continue on in the experiment
is at odds with the experimenter’s actual behavior in using the prods and following the
script for their use. Supposedly, the experimenter (confederate John Williams) used a
series of four prods to encourage the participant to continue when a participant protested
or expressed doubt about continuing.2 The sequence of prods was Prod 1: “Please continue,
or, Please go on”; Prod 2: “The experiment requires that you continue”; Prod 3: “It
is absolutely essential that you continue; and Prod 4: “You have no other choice, you
must go on” (Milgram, 1974, p. 21).3 The experimenter was to begin this sequence anew
“on each occasion that the teacher balked or showed reluctance to follow orders” (p. 21).
However, if after the fourth prod, the participant refused to continue, the participant
would be classified as disobedient and the experiment terminated. But the archival audiotapes
of the experimental sessions and the experimenter’s notes about the sessions
566	 Theory & Psychology 25(5)
revealed a very different story. The experimenter didn’t always follow the controlled
script for using the prods. He would parry participants’ protests, escalating the pressure
by inventing more coercive prods. The experimenter’s behavior led Perry (2013c) to
conclude that “The slavish obedience to authority we have come to associate with
Milgram’s experiments begins to sound much more like bullying and coercion when you
listen to this material” (p. 223). How much parrying and coercing varied across both
participants and experimental conditions (see Perry, 2013a, pp. 115–117, for a more
complete description). Russell (2009) describes the experimenter’s improvisational
prodding in the following manner: “Williams frequently displayed great feats of bottomup
innovation in the invention of progressively more coercive (stressful?) prods in trying
to bring about what he sensed his boss desired” (p. 182). Consistent with Russell’s comments,
Darley (1995), based on the transcribed experimental excerpts provided in
Milgram (1974), concluded that “the experimenter’s answers to the teacher’s queries
reveal that the experimenter had defined his role as doing whatever was necessary to get
the teacher to continue giving the shocks” (pp. 130–132). Perry (2013a) reports a good
example of this probable experimenter bias. The experimenter’s variance from the script
was very prominent in Condition 20 in which women served as participants.4 For example,
one woman was prompted 26 times and other women 14 times, 11 times, 9 times,
and so on. Thus, it appears that the 65% obedience rate reported for this condition was at
least partially due to a great deal of extra parrying and prodding by the experimenter. In
sum, the experimenter’s behavior with respect to prompting the participants was clearly
not standardized, and the experimenter’s deviations from script may have been driven by
experimenter bias. Perry (2013a) also notes that Milgram appears to have tacitly allowed
the experimenter the license to improvise because he watched a number of the experimental
conditions through a one-way mirror.
Gibson (2013b) not only discusses the experimenter’s improvisational behavior but
also a “forgotten prod” (probably more accurately described as an experimenter tactic for
getting the participant to continue in the experiment)—the experimenter leaves the room
to check on the learner to make sure that he is okay. Gibson found evidence in the archival
audio tapes that not only was there great flexibility in how the experimenter employed
the four prods but also that the experimenter in the voice-feedback condition (Condition
2) sometimes complied with participants’ demands for him to check on the learner once
he had fallen silent. When he returned after supposedly speaking to the learner, he would
report that the learner was okay and willing to continue. However, this “leaving the
room” tactic was not employed in a standardized manner across participants when it was
used and appears to have been abandoned in subsequent experimental conditions. Its use
likely led participants to infer that the learner’s predicament was not as serious as it
seemed. It is important to note that Milgram failed to include any description of this
experimenter tactic in this or any other condition in any of his publications on the obedience
experiments. This is likely due to the fact that Milgram was still refining his experimental
procedure during the proximity series of four experimental conditions, of which
the voice-feedback condition was a part (Russell, 2009).
Another interesting recent development with respect to the four prods to be used by
the experimenter concerns which of the prods actually constitute an order, and of those
that do, how did Milgram’s participants respond to them versus those prods that do not
Griggs and Whitehead III	 567
constitute orders. As Burger (2009) points out, only Prod 4, “You have no other choice,
you must go on.” clearly constitutes an order (see also Gibson, 2013a). In his partial
Milgram replication, Burger found that the fourth prod was the least successful in getting
his participants to continue (Burger, Girgis, & Manning, 2011). In fact, this prod did not
elicit any obedience because not a single participant continued after receiving Prod 4.
Burger et al. concluded that whatever Milgram was studying, it was not obedience to
orders, and “that the way the research is portrayed to students, scholars and the public
may need to be reassessed” (p. 465).
Burger et al.’s finding agrees with what Gibson (2013a) found in the Milgram materials
in the Yale archives. Gibson’s rhetorical analysis of the recorded interactions between
the experimenter and the participants revealed that the experimenter’s most order-like
interventions were overwhelmingly resisted by participants. Gibson (2013a) concluded
that his analysis “points to the intriguing possibility that the studies ultimately may have
little to do with obedience as conventionally understood” (p. 303). Thus, rather than
showing that participants in the Milgram experiments were obeying orders of those in
authority, the Milgram experiments seem to provide evidence of the opposite, that orders
from an authority lead to disobedience. Based upon these findings and some of their
own, Alex Haslam, Stephen Reicher, and their colleagues have proposed an intriguing
interpretation of Milgram’s experiments as explorations of the power of social identitybased
leadership to induce active and committed followership and not obedience (e.g.,
Haslam, Reicher, Millard, & McDonald, 2015; Reicher, Haslam, & Smith, 2012). Briefly,
the “engaged followership” is predicated upon the teachers’ acceptance of the experimenter’s
scientific goals and the leadership he exhibits in pursuing them.Also, in support
of their explanation, Haslam and Reicher provide some empirical evidence that in an
experimental analogue of the Milgram paradigm, participants are motivated not by
orders but by appeals to science (Haslam, Reicher, & Birney, 2014).
Milgram’s deceptive dehoaxing
Perry (2013a, 2013b) also discovered that the majority of participants were not appropriately
debriefed (“dehoaxed” in Milgram’s terminology) in a timely manner as Milgram
led us to believe. The debriefing that Milgram (1963, 1965b) described simply did not
happen. For most participants, the immediate debriefing did not tell them that the learner
was not really shocked. According to Perry (2013a), the comments that the participants
wrote on their questionnaires show that “far from being a systematic and detailed process,
debriefing varied across time, and in most cases was not a debriefing in the sense that I
had understood it at all” (p. 79). In addition, the transcripts of the follow-up participant
group interviews involving a subset of the participants with a psychiatrist nine months
after the experiments had ended also clearly demonstrate that the participants were not
properly debriefed and that most participants had not received an explanation that the
victim was unharmed before leaving the lab. The participants in Conditions 1–18, about
three-fourths of the participants (roughly 600), left the lab believing that they had shocked
a man and were certainly not debriefed in the manner that Milgram had claimed.
Most participants were not told the full story until they received the study report and a
questionnaire that Milgram sent to them almost a year later in July 1962. These findings
568	 Theory & Psychology 25(5)
of Milgram’s seriously inadequate debriefing of participants are particularly relevant to
Baumrind’s (1964) wondering “what sort of procedures could dissipate the type of emotional
experience” (p. 422) that many of Milgram’s participants may have experienced.
Obviously, Milgram’s inadequate procedure did not accomplish this.
Perry (2013a) is not the only researcher leveling these criticisms about the inadequate
debriefing that participants received and the harm done to many of them. For example,
in his 2011 article, “Torture at Yale,” Ian Nicholson also uses the Milgram archival materials
to provide a forceful argument that Milgram misrepresented the extent and efficacy
of his debriefing procedures, the risk posed by his experiments, and the harm done to his
participants. Based on his examination of participants’ feedback about Milgram not
informing them about the true nature of the study immediately afterward (Reaction of
subjects, 1962), Nicholson was led to assert that Milgram “deliberately misrepresented
his post-experimental procedures in his published work” (2011, p. 744), probably to
protect his credibility as a responsible researcher and the ethical integrity and possible
future of the obedience study.
The unreported relationship condition
Whereas Milgram (1974) reported 18 experimental conditions in his obedience study,
Perry (2013a) reports that, according to her analysis of the archival experimental data,
there were actually 24 (see Perry’s Appendix: List of Conditions), but one (Condition 21,
Expert Judgment) was not an actual experimental condition but rather the solicitation of
estimations by psychiatrists and laypeople of the level of obedience that would be
observed for the baseline voice-feedback baseline condition (Condition 2).5 Of the unreported
conditions (see Note 5), Perry found Condition 24, a second experimental condition
conducted in Bridgeport, CT, to be the most interesting and devotes a chapter to it.
Russell (2014) refers to this condition as “arguably the most controversial variation”
(p. 194) of Milgram’s obedience experiments. It was not reported by Milgram even
though he said that he would do so in “Some Conditions of Obedience and Disobedience
to Authority” (1965b, p. 71). This condition is usually referred to as the Relationship
condition because the pairs of participants in it (one serving as teacher and the other as
learner) were related in some way, but it has also been referred to as the “Bring a Friend”
condition (Rochat & Blass, 2014) because participants were asked to bring a “friend”—
someone that they knew well, such as a close acquaintance, a neighbor, or a relative—to
also participate in the experiment.
Twenty pairs of male participants who were relatives, friends, or neighbors served as
teacher and learner. Only three of the 20 pairs were members of the same family—a
father and son, an uncle and nephew, and two brothers-in-law. After the learner was
strapped in and the teacher and experimenter left the room, Milgram explained privately
to him about the experimental ruse and coached him on how to vocalize like the confederate
learner had done in other experimental conditions in response to the supposed
shocks. Thus, this condition was the same as the reported experiment in Bridgeport
(which Milgram called the Office Building, Bridgeport condition), but the participants
were related with one serving as teacher and the other as learner. Rochat and Blass
(2014, p. 457) point out one other important difference between these two Bridgeport
Griggs and Whitehead III	 569
conditions. In the reported condition with unrelated participants, the learner’s protests
are aimed at the experimenter. In the unreported one with related participants, the learner’s
protests are aimed at the teacher. An 85% rate of disobedience, one of the highest
rates in all of the experiments, was observed. Perry (2013a) discusses two possible reasons
for Milgram not publishing the findings for this condition: (a) they did not suit his
purpose in that they comprise a strong demonstration of disobedience (which Milgram
himself admitted in an archival note, see Perry, 2013a, p. 177), thereby challenging the
study’s overall emphasis on obedience and (b) the experiment itself would be difficult to
defend ethically because the teacher was asked to inflict pain on a friend or relative,
especially given the ethical criticisms (e.g., Baumrind, 1964) that had already been leveled
against the experimental conditions that he initially reported (Milgram, 1963).
Perry (2013a), however, was not the first researcher to discover this particular unreported
condition. Russell (2014) pointed out that Rochat and Modigliani (1997) described
this unreported condition in the Milgram archives more than a decade earlier. Russell
also gives a very insightful discussion of why Milgram may have decided against publishing
this experiment and ends up concluding that reporting it “would have predictably
stimulated an ethical firestorm” (2014, p. 200).
Skeptical participants
Perry (2013a) found evidence in the archives that a significant number of participants
had expressed doubts about the experimental set-up and cover story in their responses to
Milgram’s questionnaire. For example, one participant wrote that he found it difficult to
believe that Yale would allow a participant (the learner) to absorb such punishment, that
the description on the control board of the shock generator was far-fetched, that the
learner’s poor answers were not believable, and that the experiment was rigged and the
learner not hurt in any way. Another participant reported that he had lowered the shock
level but noticed that the learner anomalously expressed increased pain. For more detail
and examples, see Perry (2013a, pp. 133–138) and Parker (2000, p. 717).
Of more importance to this particular criticism, Perry (2013a) questions Milgram’s
claim that more than 75% of his participants believed that the learner was receiving painful
shocks (pp. 139–141). In reviewing Milgram’s Table 7 (1974, p. 172) in which he
summarized his participants’ responses to his question about their belief that the learner
was being shocked, Perry points out that it is more truthful to say that only about half of
the participants fully believed that it was real, and of those, two-thirds disobeyed the
experimenter (2013a, p. 139). Milgram’s questionable numerical conclusions stem from
his inclusion of the 24% of the participants who had expressed some doubt about whether
the learner was getting shocked. This criticism of how Milgram chose to report the questionnaire
belief data has been discussed before (e.g., Parker, 2000; Patten, 1977).
The argument that many of Milgram’s participants did not believe that they were really
administering shock to another person has also been posited by many Milgram critics
going all the way back to Orne and Holland (1968; but see Milgram’s rejoinder, 1972).
Orne and Holland report some data that Orne and Evans (1965) had collected which indicated
that the vast majority of participants (84%) would comply with an experimenter’s
instructions to perform dangerous tasks, such as retrieving a coin from what appeared to
570	 Theory & Psychology 25(5)
be nitric acid, if they thought that they were participating in an experiment because they
assumed that things were not at all as they appeared to be. However, participants who
were not told they were participating in an experiment declined to perform these tasks.
Consistent with these data, Laurent (1987) points out a seldom-cited, congruent finding in
a Milgram replication at the Max Planck Institute in Germany: “the subjects … seem to
have felt that the Max Planck Institute would not let anything dreadful happen” (Mantell
& Panzarella, 1976, p. 244). Laurent further points out that, in his opinion, Milgram was
too concerned with participants’ behavior and not enough with their perception of the
situation. Participants in an experiment concern themselves with being good subjects and
performing in a manner that they perceive is expected of them.As Mixon (1972) concluded
in discussing the use of deception in Milgram’s experiments, “it is often difficult to determine
who is deceiving whom” (p. 145).
In further support of her skeptical-participants criticism, Perry (2013a) discovered an
analysis that Milgram had his research assistant, Taketo Murata, compile, but then chose
not to publish.6 The analysis was a condition-by-condition breakdown of the degree of
shock given by participants who were certain that the learner was being shocked versus
that given by participants who had doubts about this. The analysis revealed that many of
those who administered the maximum shock did not think that they were truly shocking
the learner. In 18 of the 23 experimental conditions, the participants who fully believed
that the learner was being shocked gave lower levels of shock than the participants who
expressed doubts about the learner being shocked. Of most importance, Murata found
that in all 23 conditions, the participants most likely to disobey were those who said they
believed the learner was being shocked.7
Coverage of recent Milgram criticisms in introductory
social psychology textbooks
We wondered how current social psychology textbooks have dealt with the spate of
recent criticisms of Milgram’s obedience experiments. Thus, we decided to examine the
discussions of Milgram’s obedience experiments in these textbooks to answer this question:
Do current textbook discussions reflect any of the recent criticism of Milgram’s
experiments? The results of similar studies on the coverage of criticisms of another
famous study in introductory psychology and introductory social psychology textbooks,
the Stanford prison experiment (Zimbardo, 2007), would predict that the criticisms
would be given minimal, if any, coverage, as this is what was observed for the prison
study (Griggs, 2014; Griggs & Whitehead, 2014). Such a prediction also agrees with
Nicholson’s (2011) findings for a sample of three introductory social psychology textbooks
with copyright dates from 2006 to 2011. Nicholson found that, counter to Stam,
Lubek, and Radtke’s (1998) findings for social psychology textbooks from 1965 to 1995,
the three texts that he examined provided little or no coverage of the ethical and epistemological
controversies that have surrounded Milgram’s work for the past half century.
He also found that the “Milgram-friendly” trend that Stam et al. had observed developing
in the textbooks over the three decades that they studied had become even more pronounced
with the obedience experiments now being presented as comprising a classic
study with little or no discussion or even acknowledgment of the voluminous body of
Griggs and Whitehead III	 571
criticism that has been published in the last 50 years. In addition, Miller (1995; but see
Stam et al., 1998, Note 14, p. 182) examined a set of 50 social psychology, introductory
psychology, and sociology texts with copyright dates in the early 1990s and found that
well over half of them made no reference to the many external validity criticisms that
have been levied against the obedience experiments over the past 50 years (e.g.,
Baumrind, 1964; Lutsky, 1995; Mantell & Panzarella, 1976; Orne & Holland, 1968). In
those texts that did include mention of such criticism, almost all of them took a proMilgram
stance on this generalization issue. Miller’s finding agrees with Stam et al.’s
observation that coverage of concerns over realism and generalizability of the obedience
experiments have declined or, if covered, are dealt with summarily by textbook authors.
In sum, based on the findings in all of these prior textbook analysis studies, it is likely
that current introductory social psychology textbooks do not cover the recent criticisms
of Milgram’s experiments, and by failing to do so, are committing errors of omission and
thus not covering Milgram’s work accurately. We next report our study of current introductory
social psychology textbooks to determine the accuracy of this coverage and its
findings.
Our textbook study
Method. We used the most recent editions of 10 introductory social psychology textbooks
as the text sample to ensure that we had the most up-to-date sample available.
Copyright dates for these texts include three 2015s, two 2014s, four 2013s, and one
2012. We include complete reference information for all of these texts in the References
section, with each reference denoted by an asterisk. These 10 texts essentially comprise
the population of American introductory social psychology textbooks if briefer versions
of two of these texts and Aronson’s briefer, more trade-like The Social Animal (2012) are
excluded.
To determine all of the locations of coverage of Milgram’s obedience experiments
within each text, the Name Index was checked for Milgram and the Subject Index was
checked for obedience to authority experiments or any possible variants, such as obedience
or obedience experiments.8 Once all of the locations were determined, the extent of
the coverage was measured in terms of the number of pages devoted to it. The number of
coverage pages for each text was rounded to the nearest whole number. The coverage of
criticism in each text was determined by noting which recent critiques of the obedience
experiments were cited; if any were cited, how much space was devoted to them; and
how the critiques were treated (e.g., were they dismissed and Milgram’s view accepted).
Coverage of recent criticisms.  None of the 10 textbooks cited or discussed any of the recent
(from 2011 onward) criticisms. This is not surprising given the recent finding of little or
no coverage of any criticism of the obedience experiments in introductory social psychology
textbooks (Nicholson, 2011). First, with respect to citing Perry’s (2013a) criticisms,
realistically only the three texts with 2015 copyright dates could be expected to do
so, but none of them did.9 However, Nicholson (2011) was early enough to have been
included in all but one of the 10 texts, but none of the texts cited or discussed his criticism.
Most surprising was the fact that not one text mentioned either Burger et al.’s
572	 Theory & Psychology 25(5)
(2011) finding that Milgram’s participants were probably not obeying orders given their
behavior with respect to Prod 4 or one of Haslam and Reicher’s early articles on their
social identity-based followership explanation of Milgram’s findings (e.g., Reicher et al.,
2012).
This lack of recent criticism coverage is definitely not due to lack of space. The 10
textbooks devoted on average 7.4 pages (Mdn = 8 pages) to coverage of Milgram’s obedience
experiments with a range from 4 to 16 pages. Though not as extensive as in introductory
social psychology texts, introductory psychology textbooks typically provide
rather substantial coverage of Milgram’s obedience experiments in their social psychology
chapters (Griggs, 2014). Thus, we were curious as to whether introductory psychology
textbooks dated 2015 provided any coverage of the recent Milgram criticisms, so we
decided to examine the social psychology chapters in four introductory psychology textbooks
with 2015 copyright dates for coverage of such criticisms. Complete reference
information for these four texts is included in the Reference section, with each reference
denoted by an asterisk.
Given the early publication (publication before the copyright year of a text; see Note
9) of one of these texts, only three of these texts would have had sufficient lead time to
incorporate coverage of Perry’s (2013a) criticisms. Contrary to what we found in our
examination of the three introductory social psychology textbooks dated 2015, two of the
three introductory psychology textbooks did cite Perry (2013a) and include coverage of
some of her criticisms. One of these two texts cited Nicholson (2011) along with Perry
for a statement that Milgram’s debriefing “was less extensive and his participants’
distress greater than what he had suggested.” In contrast, not only did none of the
10 introductory social textbooks mention this criticism, but only one of these texts even
described the debriefing process per se and that description was inaccurate in that it
claimed that all participants were “fully debriefed” once the experiment was over.
The other introductory psychology text that mentioned one of Perry’s (2013a) criticisms
included three sentences on Perry’s discovery of Taketo Murata’s unpublished data
that indicated that Milgram’s participants were more likely to disobey if they believed
that the learner was actually being shocked. In this coverage, the authors say “Across the
23 variations of Milgram’s experiment …” but do not mention that Milgram did not
report all of these variations in his publications on the obedience experiments (see Note
5). This text also included two parenthetical Perry (2013a) citations: one with Perry
alone for a statement about questioning the ethics of Milgram’s experiments and the
other among a group of citations for a statement asserting that there have been some
recent replications and partial replications of Milgram’s experiments including several
by entertainment and news media.
The introductory psychology text dated 2015 that was published too early to include
coverage of Perry (2013a), however, did include a paragraph on Burger et al.’s (2011)
finding that the participants’ behavior did not display obedience as normally portrayed
but rather indicated that a social identity process was operating. The authors also cited
Reicher et al. (2012) and briefly described how participants were likely identifying with
the experimenter and not the learner and act in a way to demonstrate their commitment
to the larger scientific process. In contrast, only one of the 10 introductory social psychology
textbooks cited Burger et al. (2011), but instead of discussing Burger et al.’s
Griggs and Whitehead III	 573
questioning the claim that Milgram was really studying obedience (following orders of a
person of authority), it described Burger et al.’s finding that participants who expressed
concern for the well-being of the learner exhibited a greater reluctance to continue than
those who did not express such concern.
Given the coverage of recent criticisms in the introductory psychology textbooks
dated 2015 versus that in the introductory social psychology textbooks also dated 2015,
it appears that introductory psychology authors are more up-to-date in their coverage of
criticism of Milgram’s obedience experiments than introductory social psychology textbook
authors and that they achieve this within fewer pages of overall Milgram coverage
(Mdn = 3.5 pages). This counterintuitive finding is consistent with some other related
findings on coverage accuracy in introductory psychology versus that in social psychology
textbooks. For example, Griggs (2015b) found that introductory psychology textbook
authors seem to be doing a better job than introductory social psychology text
authors in providing an accurate version of the Kitty Genovese story, and Griggs and
Whitehead (2014) found that more coverage of the Stanford prison experiment criticisms
is provided in introductory psychology textbooks than in introductory social psychology
textbooks.
Discussion of the coverage findings.  Our examination of current introductory social psychology
textbooks revealed that they provide no coverage of recent criticisms of Milgram’s
obedience experiments. We also found that current introductory psychology
textbooks provided some coverage of recent Milgram criticisms, indicating that these
texts are more up-to-date in their coverage of Milgram criticism than current introductory
social psychology textbooks. To try to understand these findings, we discuss a proposal
by Stam et al. (1998) that provides a tenable explanation for them. Stam et al.
proposed that social psychology textbooks “serve a knowledge-conserving function for
the discipline … there is a great deal of temporal consistency, a shared core of material
and authors to be discussed, and the adoption of a homogenous, conservative perspective”
(p. 156). More specifically, Stam et al. explain how as part of this knowledgeconserving
function, the “standard” view of the obedience experiments in both social
psychology textbooks and the broader literature has developed. According to Stam et al.:
The obedience research is no longer a case study of the importance of obedience to authority
but an important promoter of the importance and necessity of experimental social psychological
research. The visibility of the research has become a token: by its critics, a token of the
vulnerability of the discipline; by proponents, a token of its strengths. Within the discipline,
Milgram is valorized for his contributions but the recurring appearance of discussions of
methodology and ethics indicate that in order to valorize Milgram’s studies social psychologists
must continually engage in damage control. It is this combined valorization/defensiveness that
we take to be the standard view of the obedience experiments. (1998, pp. 162–163)
The Milgram-friendly lack of coverage of recent criticisms of the obedience experiments
that was observed in the present study for social psychology textbooks is definitely
consistent with Stam et al.’s (1998) proposal of a standard view of the obedience
experiments that evolved from a valorization/defensiveness process engaged in by social
574	 Theory & Psychology 25(5)
psychologists. Such coverage would be part of the damage control. Given the knowledgeconserving
function of social psychology textbooks, “standard views” of other famous
studies in social psychology should have also evolved. Some recent related research indicates
that this is likely the case. The Stanford prison experiment is clearly a famous social
psychological study, and Griggs and Whitehead (2014) found no or very minimal coverage
of the extensive body of criticism of the Stanford prison experiment in social psychology
textbooks. As the lack of coverage of criticisms of the obedience experiments
observed in the present study, the minimal coverage of the Stanford prison experiment
criticisms would serve a damage control function. Similarly, this evolution of a standard
view of famous studies likely plays a role in the finding that an analysis of social psychology
textbooks from 1953 to 1984 revealed that although most of the responses on critical
trials were independent ones in Asch’s classic social pressure experiments (1951, 1952,
1955, 1956), textbooks increasingly overemphasized the minority conformity responding
and deemphasized the majority independent responding during that time period (Friend,
Rafferty, & Bramel, 1990). Griggs (2015a) found that this distorted coverage (the standard
view) has not only persisted but also increased over the past 30 years.
This standard view theory may not only apply to famous experiments but also to
famous stories in social psychology textbooks. Indeed, Manning, Levine, and Collins
(2007) proposed this type of explanation for their finding of the perseverance of factual
inaccuracies in the coverage of the murder of Kitty Genovese in the social psychology
textbooks that they examined. Seven years later, Griggs and Whitehead (2014) found
that this inaccuracy problem was still the case in introductory social psychology textbooks.
The present finding that introductory psychology texts cover recent criticisms of
the Milgram obedience experiments better than introductory social psychology textbooks
and Griggs’s (2015b) finding of more accurate coverage of the Kitty Genovese
story in introductory psychology textbooks also provide indirect support for the standard
view theory in that introductory psychology textbook authors would not be as likely to
provide social psychology’s standard view of its famous studies and stories because most
would not be social psychologists. Griggs (2014, see Note 4) provides some support for
this reasoning. In brief, Griggs found that a larger percentage of the introductory psychology
textbooks without a social psychologist author included criticism of the Stanford
prison experiment than those with a social psychologist author (57% vs. 25%).
Epilogue
Social psychology textbooks are still giving a large amount of space to Milgram’s obedience
experiments and his conclusions about them, but no space to the many recent criticisms
of the experiments and how Milgram depicted them in his publications. According
to Morawski (1992), textbooks are the key transmitters of psychological knowledge both
to potential new members of the discipline and to those outside of the discipline (giving
psychology away), and therefore it is essential that textbook information be accurate.
Thus, it is important to identify inaccuracies in our textbooks so that they can be corrected
and we as teachers and textbook authors do not continue to “give away” false
information about our discipline. Given that Milgram’s obedience study is one of the
Griggs and Whitehead III	 575
most famous studies in psychology with far-reaching impact outside of psychology, it is
especially important that coverage of it in our textbooks be accurate. We are not proposing
banishing coverage of the obedience experiments in textbooks, but rather covering
them in a more accurate manner that includes coverage of their flaws and shortcomings
as explicated in the extensive criticism now available.Tavris (2014) argues that Milgram’s
obedience study should be taught as a “contentious classic,” but that would prove difficult
given that current introductory social psychology textbooks present it as an uncontentious
classic. As Peter Baker (2013) argues, “We have heard Milgram’s version
enough. What we need now is … a proper dehoaxing” (final para).
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.
Notes
1.	 Gina Perry’s book, Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram
Psychology Experiments, was initially published in Australia in May 2012 and reviewed in
the U.S. in early 2013 (e.g., Whitbourne, 2013). The U.S. edition of Perry’s book was published
in September 2013.
2.	 Gibson (2013b, pp. 179–180) points out that there is an inconsistency between Milgram’s
(1965b) description of the prods and the experimenter’s use of them and the descriptions
given in Milgram (1963, 1974). He concludes that the description in Milgram (1963, 1974),
consistent with the description here, has come to be the accepted view of this part of the
experimental procedure.
3.	 In addition to the four main prods, the experimenter had two special prods that he was to use
in specified situations (see Milgram, 1974, pp. 21–22). First, if the participant asked if the
learner was liable to suffer permanent physical injury, the experimenter was to say: “Although
the shocks may be painful, there is no permanent tissue damage, so please go on.” If necessary,
this would be followed by Prods 2, 3, and 4. Second, if the participant said that the
learner did not want to go on, the experimenter was to reply: “Whether the learner likes it or
not, you must go on until he has learned all the word pairs correctly. So please go on.” Again,
if necessary, this would be followed by Prods 2, 3, and 4.
4.	 The numbering of the experimental conditions used in this paper reflects the chronological
order that they were conducted, except for Condition 22, which was conducted at various
times during 1961 and 1962. The chronologically ordered list of conditions, along with brief
descriptions of each condition, is given in the Appendix: List of Conditions (Perry, 2013a,
pp. 304–312, and in Haslam, Loughnan, & Perry, 2014, Table 1). It is important to note that
because Milgram did not report the findings of all of the conditions that he conducted, this
numbering scheme is different than that used by Milgram (1974).
5.	 Gina Perry (personal communication, December 8, 2014) sent me (Richard A. Griggs) copies
of the original data sheets for Milgram’s obedience experiments that are part of the Milgram
papers at Yale University. By using these data sheets and the listing of the 23 experimental
conditions and the one non-experimental condition in Perry (2013a, Appendix: List of
576	 Theory & Psychology 25(5)
Conditions) and the experimental conditions described in Milgram (1974, Tables 2–5) and in
Milgram (1963, 1964, 1965a, 1965b), I determined that Milgram did not report Condition 17
(Teacher in charge) and only very briefly described the nature of Conditions 19 (Authority from
afar) and 24 (Intimate Relationships) in “Some Conditions of Obedience and Disobedience
to Authority” (1965b). He also only reported a brief general description in a footnote of the
obedience finding for Condition 19 and nothing on the outcome of Condition 24. In addition,
Milgram did not report anything about Part B of Conditions 10 (Conflicting instructions) and
15 (Good experimenter, bad experimenter) and only provided a brief general description of
the nature and results of Part B of Condition 18 (No experimenter) in “Some Conditions …”
(1965b). All of the above condition numbers and names are those used by Perry in her listing
of conditions. In this listing, Perry also includes descriptions of and the results for all 24
conditions that Milgram ran.
6.	 Taketo Murata’s unpublished analysis is titled “Reported Belief in Shocks and Level of
Obedience” and is in the Stanley Milgram Papers, Box 45, Folder 158 at Yale University.
7.	 Gus Brannigan pointed out that it would be interesting to use the data that Milgram
reported in Table 7 (1974, p. 172), which juxtaposes defiance/obedience rates versus belief
in the reality of the shocks, to compute the odds ratio of defiance based on belief (personal
communication, December 9, 2014). Comparing the data for participants who believed
the shocks to be real or probably real versus those who believed the shocks were not real
or probably not real, he calculated the odds ratio of defiance based on belief to be 2.57.
This means that if a participant thought that the shocks were real or probably real, this
increased the odds ratio of defiance by 2.57 times, which is generally consistent with
Taketo Murata’s analysis.
8.	 For one textbook not yet published, this search process was not used. Instead, the publisher
of this text sent us the PDF of the only chapter in which the Milgram obedience experiments
were covered.
9.	 The publication date of a textbook (the date that the book is actually published and available)
is typically different from its copyright date. Textbooks are sometimes published up to
a year before their copyright date. In addition, the text finalization and production processes
typically tack on another 3 to 6 months of time before the publication date. Thus, the authors
of the social psychology textbooks with 2014 copyright dates would not have had sufficient
time to incorporate coverage of the U.S. edition of Perry’s book even if they were published
in January, 2014. However, there is a caveat to this statement. They would have had sufficient
time if they were aware of the earlier, more limited publication of the Australian edition in
May, 2012 (Perry, 2012) because the two textbooks were published in January and February
of 2013, respectively. The authors of all three 2015 textbooks in the present study, however,
would have had sufficient time to be aware of the U.S. edition of the book because it was
published in September, 2013, and they were published in July, 2014, November, 2014, and
January, 2015, respectively.
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Author biographies
Richard A. Griggs is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at the University of
Florida. After earning his PhD in cognitive psychology at Indiana University in 1974, he joined the
faculty at the University of Florida that fall. He spent his entire academic career there, retiring in
2008. He won numerous teaching awards at the University of Florida and in 1994 was named
580	 Theory & Psychology 25(5)
Teacher of the Year for 4-year colleges and universities by APA’s Division Two, Teaching of
Psychology. His two main research areas are human reasoning and the teaching of psychology. He
has published widely in both areas, including 45 articles in Teaching of Psychology. The fourth
edition of his introductory psychology textbook, Psychology: A Concise Introduction, was published
in 2014. Email: rgriggs@ufl.edu
George I. Whitehead III is Professor in the Department of Psychology at Salisbury University. He
earned his PhD in social psychology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 1973. The previous
year he had joined the faculty at Salisbury University (Salisbury State College at the time), where
he is still teaching. He was named outstanding faculty member by the Student Government Association
twice and has received a number of local and state awards for his community service. His research
interests include pro-social behavior, service-learning, self-presentation theory, and the teaching of
psychology. He has published research in each of these areas and co-authored two books on servicelearning.
The most recent book, A Glorious Revolution for Youth and Communities: Service-Learning
and Model Communities was published in 2010. Email: giwhitehead@salisbury.edu