Why Ordinary People Do Terrible Things
A new analysis reveals overlooked lessons from the Milgram experiment.
Updated March 31, 2026 | Reviewed by Margaret Foley
In 1961, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram recruited ordinary men for what he called a study on memory and learning. When they arrived, a researcher in a gray lab coat directed each volunteer to deliver electric shocks to a stranger in the next room for every wrong answer on a memory test, starting at 15 volts and escalating to 450 volts, past switches labeled Danger: Severe Shock, and finally XXX. The stranger was an actor. The shocks were fake. The experiment had nothing to do with memory.
Roughly two out of three participants pressed every switch, all the way to 450 volts, while the learner screamed, begged, complained of a heart condition, and finally went silent. Milgram concluded that ordinary people will commit terrible acts when an authority figure instructs them to. That finding shaped how we explain the Holocaust, war crimes, and institutional cruelty for six decades.
New audio recordings from those original sessions challenge that explanation at its foundation.
What the Researchers Were Actually Asking
Researchers David Kaposi and David Sumeghy recently listened to 136 original recordings from Milgram's sessions, preserved at Yale University Library. Their question cut to the heart of Milgram's explanation.
If people obeyed because they believed in the legitimacy of the scientific experiment, they would have followed all of its rules. Before each shock, the teacher was supposed to complete five steps: read a test question, evaluate the answer, announce the voltage, deliver the shock, and then read the correct answer aloud. Those five steps were the scientific content of the study, the thing that made the shocks part of a memory experiment rather than something else entirely.
What the Tapes Reveal
Not one fully obedient participant completed those five steps correctly from start to finish. Not one. Nearly half of every shock they delivered had at least one broken step. On average, they were violating the rules in nearly 50 percent of their actions.
The most common violation was reading the next test question directly over the learner's screams, guaranteeing the learner could not hear it, could not answer correctly, and would receive another shock. The memory study had not just been abandoned. It had been turned against the learner.
The one step nobody skipped? Pressing the lever.
If participants were complying because they believed in the science, where did that belief go the moment they stopped following the science? They were not obeying. Something else was happening in that room.
The experimenter was doing two things simultaneously, and 60 years of interpretation missed what that combination produced.
On one side, when a participant hesitated, he had a script. Four prods, in order. "Please continue." Then: "The experiment requires that you continue." Then: "It is absolutely essential that you continue." And finally: "You have no other choice, you must go on." Every exit was being actively closed.
On the other side, as participants skipped steps and read questions over screams, the experimenter said nothing. He did not correct them. He did not pause the session. He was driving participants forward with one hand and letting the legitimacy of the situation drain away with the other.
That combination produced what Kaposi and Sumeghy call a shift from legitimate to illegitimate violence. The experiment began with a stated purpose. As the protocol collapsed and the experimenter stayed silent, it became something with none. The participants were no longer inside a scientific study. They were inside a situation where a person was being harmed, every justification had dissolved, and the only constant was a man in a gray lab coat telling them they had no other choice.
That is not obedience. That is coercion, not through force, but through relentless pressure on one action while silence consumes everything else.
The Ones Who Resisted
History has treated the participants who refused to continue as a footnote. The new research asks us to see them differently.
The resisters followed the protocol more carefully than those who went all the way. Several completed every step correctly, right up until the moment they stopped. On average, they violated the rules in about 30 percent of their sequences. The fully obedient group: nearly 50 percent.
They were the ones still holding onto the stated purpose of the experiment. When the protocol stopped making sense, they had something to measure the situation against. They could see the gap between what had been promised and what was actually being demanded. And they were still asking the question the others had quietly stopped asking: Does this still make sense?
Why were some people able to keep asking that question when others could not? The answer from the research is counterintuitive. The people most likely to keep pressing the lever were not the cold or the callous. Research by Bègue and colleagues found that the traits most associated with obedience were agreeableness and conscientiousness : the cooperative, the rule-followers who wanted to be good participants and did not want to disappoint the authority in the room. The resisters, by contrast, showed higher moral reasoning and social intelligence : the habit of asking whether an action is justified, and the ability to read accurately when a situation has shifted.
That is who gets recruited into high-control groups—not the broken or the weak, but rather the conscientious, the ones who want to contribute to something larger than themselves. And that is who ends up pressing the lever when the protocol is gone and only the pressure remains.
I have spent nearly three decades working with people caught inside situations that caused serious harm. The most dangerous person in those situations is rarely the one giving loud orders. It is the one who applies relentless pressure toward a single harmful action while staying silent as every rule, every justification, every stated purpose falls apart around it. From inside that situation, it does not feel like coercion. It feels like there is simply no way out.
The protection is not stronger willpower . It is the habit of moral reasoning: staying connected to what you originally agreed to, and noticing when the ask has quietly become something else.
Milgram thought he was studying how authority commands compliance. His tapes suggest he accidentally documented something more dangerous: how authority manufactures it, not through orders, but through pressure and silence working together, while everything that might have allowed someone to stop disappears.
In the end, the protocol was not what made the shocks legitimate. It was what made stopping possible.
The next time you hear that a cult member did something unthinkable to a fellow believer, remember the teacher in that Yale laboratory, the protocol gone, the screaming ignored, and a man in a gray lab coat who just kept saying: continue.
Share this post Facebook Bluesky Linkedin Email
There was a problem adding your email address. Please try again.
By submitting your information you agree to the Psychology Today Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy
Joni E. Johnston , Psy.D , is a clinical/forensic psychologist, private investigator, author, and host of the YouTube channel and podcast "Unmasking a Murderer."
Get the help you need from a therapist near you–a FREE service from Psychology Today.
This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.