Why would you stand up for men and boys? Milgram’s message of hope to male psychology
2021 marks the sixtieth anniversary of Psychologist Stanley Milgram’s Behavioral Study of Obedience, the first of Milgram’s famous experiments considering the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience.
Participants were led to believe that they were assisting an unrelated experiment, in which they had to administer electric shocks to a "learner". These fake electric shocks gradually increased to levels that would have been fatal had they been real. Incredibly 65% (two-thirds) of participants were prepared to deliver the highest level of volts.
By the time I commenced my undergraduate studies some thirty years later, Milgram’s Shock Experiment had become required reading. It remains one of the most widely known psychology experiments to this day. Indeed, it was an awareness of Milgram’s research that first inspired me to sign up for a Psychology degree.
Today, as I reflect upon it, with the perspective of some further thirty years of adult learning, it strikes me that one of his most significant revelations, about the apparent ease at which adults will acquiesce to the commands of authority, should have significant relevance to anyone seeking to promote an awareness and understanding of male psychology.
“The BPS… have had a Psychology of Women Section since 1988, and yet for some reason a full third of participating members voted against the proposal to launch a section promoting research, teaching and understanding of psychology applied to the well-being of boys and men”
This thought first occurred to me at the recent 2021 BPS Male Psychology Conference, while listening to Clinical Psychologist Martin Seagar discuss the Journey so Far for Male Psychology in the UK. In particular, his frank account about the surprising opposition to the creation of a Male Psychology Section from within the British Psychology Society’s (BPS) own Membership.
As a society the BPS strive to embrace equity, diversity and inclusion in everything that they do, they have had a Psychology of Women Section since 1988, and yet for some reason a full third of participating members voted against the proposal to launch a section promoting research, teaching and understanding of psychology applied to the well-being of boys and men.
Such a revelation didn’t remotely surprise me and, I believe, can be considered an example of the sort of everyday ignorance or gamma bias that one can all too frequently encounter when seeking to address structural and attitudinal barriers relevant to this area of psychological study.
Since completing my postgraduate studies, I have progressed a career championing equality between the sexes, and between people with other personal characteristics protected under equality law. For two decades, I have helped to guide businesses, charities, public policy makers and service providers through the sometimes daunting patchwork of statutory requirements, case law, best practice guidance and moral authority that instructs them on how to best ‘do the right thing’ when it comes to the matter of promoting equality of opportunity for all.
It’s not always easy, but in truth, provided they commit to some very basic principles, it’s really not that hard at all.
In recent years, it has been heartening to witness an emerging awareness and concern about areas of male inequality. Yet twenty years of working within systems of support for equality has taught me that talk of prejudice or disadvantage encountered by boys and men in this context can still all too often be seen as somehow taboo.
Sadly, evidence of male inequalities can still sometimes be minimised or ignored. For example, when compared to conversations addressing ‘the gender pay-gap’ or under-representations in STEM, how often have you heard equality practitioners talk about inequalities of outcome in Family Courts, or the emerging trend that children in the western world are more likely to live with a pet than their father?
Meanwhile, men, especially straight, white, cis-gender, middle-aged men are regularly presented as a group who can statistically be seen to benefit from inequality experienced by others, or worse still, as somehow collectively regarded as responsible for such inequality.
The richest of the rich and the world’s most powerful are almost exclusively men and yet this lifestyle will not mirror the experience of most of the men we know. It is also a reality that some of the most overt and obvious examples of structural discrimination in 21st Century Britain can be evidenced by the support and status afforded to vulnerable victims of domestic and sexual violence and even child abuse, based solely on grounds of their sex.
By way of example, consider the fact that boys as young as eight are still turned away from state funded refuges, solely on the protected characteristic of their sex; or that the crimes of the most prolific rapist in British history, all committed against boys and men, are officially classed and recorded in Government statistics as Violence Against Women and Girls.
Such obvious examples of gendered gamma bias and direct sex discrimination were the catalyst for the creation of my multi-media research project: The Glass Blind Spot. Through this I attempt to document and examine examples of the phenomenon where people consciously or unconsciously ignore information relevant to a conversation, or debate, about human rights because it would detract or distract from their preferred political narrative.
We all have our personal prejudices or ‘blind spots’, but a ‘glass bind-spot is so big that an otherwise obvious ‘elephant in the room’ can comfortably hide there. It is my sincere belief that the most effective way to address the existence of such obvious elephants is, first and foremost, to point at them.
“The championing of male inequalities is rarely considered as an especially fashionable or ‘cool thing to do’. More so, such activities can also invoke quite outrageous and self-evidently baseless accusations”
My project started simply as a modest aspect of my own commitment to lifelong learning, based on a desire to understand more about the disadvantages and challenges experienced by the Equality Act’s least popular protected characteristic. As it has developed over time, and, speaking from the perspective of an experienced equality practitioner, it increasingly strikes me that pointing at obvious elephants is very much ‘the right thing to do’. Even if, admittedly, there can be potential detriments and dangers associated with such activity.
As many of the men and women I have met along my journey will contest to, the championing of male inequalities is rarely considered as an especially fashionable or ‘cool thing to do’. More so, such activities can also invoke quite outrageous and self-evidently baseless accusations from activists who would prefer that people like us desist from pointing at the sort of inequalities and issues that we do. And yet despite such distractions, and at an instinctual level, pointing at elephants very much feels like entirely ‘the right thing to do’.
All of which brings back to Milgram and the most important message to come out of his experiments into the sometimes troublingly, biddable nature of the human mind.
Some aspects of his methodology have aged poorly and such an experiment would today breach BPS standards around subject duty of care. Also, only one variation of his experiment involved female participants. Perhaps the approximate 35% of BPS Members who voted against the creation of a Male Psychology Section may point to this as evidence that the, now overwhelmingly female, discipline of Psychology is primarily the study of men in a man’s, man’s world.
As it happens, the all-female variation of his experiment produced similar results to most of the all-male versions. Two of Milgram’s variations do stand out however. For example, Peter Gabriel’s song ‘We Do What We’re Told (Milgram’s 37)’ points to the disturbing results of Experiment 18 where, when subjects could instruct an assistant to press the switches for them, an incredible 37 out of 40 subjects (92.5%) shocked to the maximum 450 volts.
It was Gabriel’s account of this variation that first introduced me to Milgram’s troubling findings. And some forty years of further reflection on the power and influence of authority, has now led me to believe that Milgram’s most important lesson can actually be found in the results of Experiment 17.
“Milgram shows us that… we are significantly less likely to ‘do what we’re told’ … when we witness others around us questioning the legitimacy of instructing authority”
In this variation, the subjects participated in the experiment in the presence of two other people, posing as participants who refused to fully obey. The first stopped at 150 volts, followed by the second at 210; and when witnessing these entirely ethical acts of disobedience, subject compliance dropped to 10%.
Thus, whilst Milgram shows us that, the majority of us may have a tendency to ‘go along to get along’, especially when coerced by authority; we are significantly less likely to ‘do what we’re told’, to do things that on an instinctual level we feel to be wrong, when we witness others around us questioning the legitimacy of instructing authority and pointing at an otherwise self-evident truth.
Happily, there are increasing examples of men and women leading by example and mapping a path beyond the adverse impact of ignorance and gendered gamma bias, not least those involved in the creation of the BPS Male Psychology Section itself.
In essence then, the most important lesson that we can derive from Milgram, and, indeed, many other studies concerning social pressure, such as Solomon Asch’s Conformity Experiment, is the fact that people are powerful social models for other people.
This is the reason why I point at elephants obscuring otherwise self-evident realities. My experience has been that such actions quickly lead to the discovery of many people around me who quietly share my perspective, or are also pointing at things they instinctively feel to be wrong. It’s a valuable lesson for any circumstance and one I believe to be especially relevant to anyone seeking to promote an awareness and understanding of male psychology.
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Disclaimer: This article is for information purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy, legal advice, or other professional opinion. Never disregard such advice because of this article or anything else you have read from the Centre for Male Psychology. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of, or are endorsed by, The Centre for Male Psychology, and we cannot be held responsible for these views. Read our full disclaimer here.
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