The Libertarian Personality
Indeed, one of Milgram’s experiments dramatizes this fact. Many of Milgram’s subjects insisted that they went along with the experiment only because the learner had consented. Their response is, of course, quite different from the agentic explanation.
Here, subjects claim to be impressed by the learner’s consent, not the experimenter’s orders. Their consent-centered explanation of why they complied is in line with classical-liberal or libertarian political philosophy - the learner has consented to participate, therefore it is not wrong to subject him to what he consented to, even if he regretted it. Perhaps being impressed by the learner’s consent is the basic explanation of Milgram compliance. If so, the theory must be that compliers represent “Libertarian Personalities” - if, that is, their understanding of why they complied is correct.To test this libertarian explanation, Milgram ran a variation in which the nervous learner expressly reserved the right to back out of the experiment whenever he wanted. He did this out loud, in the presence of the teacher and the experimenter. But even so, 40 percent of the subjects followed the experimenter’s instructions to the bitter end despite the learner’s protests; and three-fourths of the subjects proceeded long past the point where the learner withdrew his consent. Apparently, whether the learner consented or not is actually not especially relevant to whether subjects are willing to administer high-level shocks to him regardless of his subsequent protests. We simply can’t take subjects’ own explanations for their obedience at face value.