The Milgram Obedience Experiments and the Problem of Studying Authority Figures in Political and Social Science Research

The Milgram obedience experiments called into question the limits of obedience to authority figures. The perverse consequences of concerns over the Milgram experiments are (1) that researchers must now submit to the authority of ethics review boards and (2) that researchers are considered prima facie to be threats to participants. These assumptions are questioned widely by social science researchers, but this article argues that these assumptions seem to have blinded analysts to the possibility that there may be a group of participants that might also be threatened by the power of authority figures in a research situation—researchers. Regarding the second point, social science researchers “interviewing up” may themselves be threatened, whether overtly or covertly, by their participants’ relative authority and power. In cases where researchers work with extraordinarily powerful respondents, what might irbs and the researchers they work for learn from the Milgram experiments?