In 1961, a young psychologist named Stanley Milgram set out to understand what he viewed as one of the most pressing questions of his time: How had the German people succumbed to authoritarian control and participated in the atrocities of the Holocaust? Born to Jewish parents and deeply affected by the horrors of World War II, Milgram designed an experiment at Yale University that he hoped would illuminate the particular German susceptibility to authority that he believed must exist.
What he discovered in his New Haven laboratory would shake him to his core – not because it revealed something unique about German psychology, but because it revealed something universal about human nature that hit far closer to home.
The experiment was deceptively simple. Participants were told they were assisting in a study about learning and memory, where they would act as “teachers” administering electric shocks to “learners” when they made mistakes. The learners were actually actors, and the shocks weren’t real, but the participants didn’t know this. As the supposed voltage increased and the actors cried out in apparent pain, an authority figure in a lab coat simply instructed the participants to continue.
Milgram expected that only a small percentage of Americans would fully comply with these cruel instructions. He was wrong. Sixty-five percent of participants continued administering shocks all the way to the maximum voltage, even as they heard screams of agony and pleas to stop. The participants weren’t sadists – they were ordinary Americans from all walks of life. They expressed extreme distress and anxiety about continuing, yet they did so anyway when instructed by an authority figure.
Milgram never needed to travel to Germany to study authoritarianism. He found its psychological foundations right there in Connecticut, in the beating heart of American democracy. The mirror he held up reflected not German exceptionalism, but human universality – our deep-seated tendency to defer to authority, even when it conflicts with our moral compass.
This lesson resonates with haunting relevance in America today. We watch in real time as millions of our fellow citizens demonstrate their willingness to follow authoritarian leaders who demand loyalty above truth, who attack democratic institutions, and who dehumanize those they define as “others.” Like Milgram’s participants, many express discomfort with specific actions or statements, yet continue to comply and support when directed by authority figures they’ve accepted as legitimate.
The pattern Milgram documented plays out daily: A leader makes an obviously false claim about election fraud, and people who know better nod along. Institutions fundamental to democracy are attacked, and those who once defended them fall silent. Cruel policies are enacted against vulnerable groups, and citizens who consider themselves moral look the other way. The voltage dial turns higher and higher, and still they continue.
What Milgram showed us is that this compliance doesn’t require evil intent or even agreement with the authority’s goals. It simply requires the right psychological conditions: a recognized authority figure, gradual escalation of demands, and a system that diffuses individual responsibility. Sound familiar? These are exactly the conditions that authoritarian movements excel at creating.
The terrifying implication of Milgram’s work isn’t that Americans are especially susceptible to authoritarianism – it’s that we’re just as susceptible as anyone else, despite our democratic traditions and ideals of individual liberty. The very fact that Milgram found these results in New Haven rather than Nuremberg makes them more, not less, relevant to America’s current predicament.
But if Milgram’s findings are a warning, they’re also a call to action. Understanding our psychological vulnerabilities is the first step to guarding against them. His research shows that resistance to malevolent authority is possible – after all, some participants did refuse to continue, even in the face of pressure. Those who resisted often did so by actively rejecting the authority figure’s right to demand unethical actions, maintaining their sense of personal responsibility, and connecting with the humanity of those they were being asked to harm.
These are precisely the psychological resources we must cultivate to resist authoritarian appeals today: a fierce sense of individual moral responsibility, skepticism toward authority figures who demand blind loyalty, and an unshakeable recognition of our shared humanity across political and social divides.
Milgram never made it to Germany to study the psychological aftermath of the Third Reich. Instead, he discovered something far more important in New Haven – a warning about the fragility of democratic values in the face of authority, and a lesson about the constant vigilance required to maintain them. As America grapples with its own authoritarian temptations, we would do well to remember what he found in that Yale laboratory: The capacity for obedience to malevolent authority lies not in some distant “other,” but in the human heart itself. The voltage dial is turning. The question is: Will we continue to press the button.
