# Obedience to Authority: the aftermath

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obedience-to-authority-the-aftermath/5894
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [January 8, 2000, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obedience-to-authority-the-aftermath/5894 "2000-01-08T06:26:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Interrobang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/interrobang/32/17463_2.png) [@Interrobang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Interrobang)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2000, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obedience-to-authority-the-aftermath/5894/1 "2000-01-08T06:26:00Z")

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I read Stanley Milgram’s book _Obedience to Authority_ a while back, and was left with one burning question: what happened to the subjects of his psychological experiments? (These are the infamous “people will shock other people _really badly_ if an authority figure says to” experiments.)

In the book, Milgrim is careful to indicate that post-experiment feedback/counseling was available to the subjects, but that they were surprisingly(?) undisturbed overall. He mentions a letter from one subject who cited the experiment as part of the reason he declared himself a conscientious objecter during the Vietnam War.

But I’ve also heard rumblings that at least some subjects crumbled afterward – they were psychologically devastated by the revelations about their own capabilities and so had a hard time coping with life After Milgram.

This sounds like wishful thinking, frankly, from people horrified at what the experiments indicated about human behavior. My brother read the book as part of a college intro course, and he said that his professor mentioned the subjects’ severe psychological problems as a fact. And, of course, the methodology of the experiments is no longer possible, because of the reaction of scientific moderating bodies to those very experiments.

So. Any verifiable evidence of what happened to the people Milgram experimented on?

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All the best people have bad chests and bone diseases.  
It’s all frightfully romantic.  
[ul]_Heavenly Creatures_, scr. Walsh & Jackson[/ul]