result we get in game theory in what we call escalation games. What I’d like to suggest is that Milgram’s experiment is an escalation game, and the playing of an escalation game certainly involves reasoning.
“Take the simplest escalation game, the dollar auction. Two or more people can bid on a dollar. Each bid has to be higher than the last, and the highest bid gets the dollar—just like in a regular auction—but, crucially, the lower bidders have to pay whatever their last bid was, even though they get nothing. Given these rules, the bidding will quickly go up to a dollar, with the last bidder having bid ninety-nine cents. Will it stop there?No, because then the ninety-nine-cent bidder will have to pay ninety-nine cents and get nothing for it. So he rationally bids a dollar and a cent, so he’ll lose only a cent rather than a dollar, which is outbid by a dollar and two cents, and so on. What happens in the dollar auction is that people will bid five dollars, ten, fifteen dollars, just to get a dollar in return. In fact, once you get a dollar auction started, there’s no rational way for it to end, since the cost to either player of bowing out will be high, and the marginal cost of raising his bid is just a penny. So it’s rational to keep bidding, a penny at a time, even though this leads to an irrational result.
“Anyway, the Milgram experiment is an escalation game. Once a participant takes the first step, he’s already paid a certain price—he’s inflicted discomfort, and he’s feeling bad about it—but if he stops he’ll get nothing for his pain. He won’t have successfully completed a psychological experiment and contributed something to science, and that authority figure running the experiment is going to be displeased with him. So, once he’s made his first bid, and the experimenter escalates by telling him he has to give an even stronger shock at the next mistake or he will not have completed the experiment like a good subject, he’s more than likely to escalate by complying. Just like the dollar auction, once you start there’s no natural place to end until the experimenter calls a halt to it. It’s all perfectly rational, step by step, even if it leads to a bizarre result. In fact, given that the experiment is, in fact, an escalation game, the outcome is completely predictable.
“And here’s how to empirically test what I’m proposing. Run the experiment with the participants instructed, with no matter how much authority, to administer a deadly voltage on the first trial, without any incremental escalation, and see what happens. I predict that not a single subject will do it.”
Lucinda Mandelbaum had, on the spot, not only devised an alternative explanation that undermined the claims of the presenter, but, in the best scientific tradition, had also conceived a way of testing the two alternative hypotheses. And it had all come out so smooth and polished— frankly, a lot more coherent than the delivered lecture itself. Cass thought there might have been a scattering of applause following her rejoinder, although he couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t projected his own silent ovation onto the external world.
Cass, ravished, followed the ensuing dialogue between the astonishing Lucinda and the atomizing Lipkin. There was no doubt in Cass’s mind, as he was sure that there was no doubt in anyone’s mind, including Lipkin’s, that Lucinda got the better of the man, whom Cass now actively disliked for keeping up his increasingly whining refusal to accept Lucinda’s brilliant counter-explanation.
Pavel Yarnau, the smarmy chair of the Psychology Department, finally called a halt to the heated Q & A, thanking “our speaker for providing us all with such a lively time and much food for thought. And now let’s continue the discussion over more mundane fare, not to speak of drink. I ask you all to join me upstairs in the Leah and Marty Feingold Room for the reception in honor of Professor
“Take the simplest escalation game, the dollar auction. Two or more people can bid on a dollar. Each bid has to be higher than the last, and the highest bid gets the dollar—just like in a regular auction—but, crucially, the lower bidders have to pay whatever their last bid was, even though they get nothing. Given these rules, the bidding will quickly go up to a dollar, with the last bidder having bid ninety-nine cents. Will it stop there?No, because then the ninety-nine-cent bidder will have to pay ninety-nine cents and get nothing for it. So he rationally bids a dollar and a cent, so he’ll lose only a cent rather than a dollar, which is outbid by a dollar and two cents, and so on. What happens in the dollar auction is that people will bid five dollars, ten, fifteen dollars, just to get a dollar in return. In fact, once you get a dollar auction started, there’s no rational way for it to end, since the cost to either player of bowing out will be high, and the marginal cost of raising his bid is just a penny. So it’s rational to keep bidding, a penny at a time, even though this leads to an irrational result.
“Anyway, the Milgram experiment is an escalation game. Once a participant takes the first step, he’s already paid a certain price—he’s inflicted discomfort, and he’s feeling bad about it—but if he stops he’ll get nothing for his pain. He won’t have successfully completed a psychological experiment and contributed something to science, and that authority figure running the experiment is going to be displeased with him. So, once he’s made his first bid, and the experimenter escalates by telling him he has to give an even stronger shock at the next mistake or he will not have completed the experiment like a good subject, he’s more than likely to escalate by complying. Just like the dollar auction, once you start there’s no natural place to end until the experimenter calls a halt to it. It’s all perfectly rational, step by step, even if it leads to a bizarre result. In fact, given that the experiment is, in fact, an escalation game, the outcome is completely predictable.
“And here’s how to empirically test what I’m proposing. Run the experiment with the participants instructed, with no matter how much authority, to administer a deadly voltage on the first trial, without any incremental escalation, and see what happens. I predict that not a single subject will do it.”
Lucinda Mandelbaum had, on the spot, not only devised an alternative explanation that undermined the claims of the presenter, but, in the best scientific tradition, had also conceived a way of testing the two alternative hypotheses. And it had all come out so smooth and polished— frankly, a lot more coherent than the delivered lecture itself. Cass thought there might have been a scattering of applause following her rejoinder, although he couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t projected his own silent ovation onto the external world.
Cass, ravished, followed the ensuing dialogue between the astonishing Lucinda and the atomizing Lipkin. There was no doubt in Cass’s mind, as he was sure that there was no doubt in anyone’s mind, including Lipkin’s, that Lucinda got the better of the man, whom Cass now actively disliked for keeping up his increasingly whining refusal to accept Lucinda’s brilliant counter-explanation.
Pavel Yarnau, the smarmy chair of the Psychology Department, finally called a halt to the heated Q & A, thanking “our speaker for providing us all with such a lively time and much food for thought. And now let’s continue the discussion over more mundane fare, not to speak of drink. I ask you all to join me upstairs in the Leah and Marty Feingold Room for the reception in honor of Professor
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