According to Wikipedia and hundreds of psychology textbooks:

“Charles Sheridan and Richard King hypothesized that some of Milgram’s subjects may have suspected that the victim was faking, so they repeated the experiment with a real victim: a puppy who was given real electric shocks. They found that 20 out of the 26 participants complied to the end. The six that had refused to comply were all male (54% of males were obedient); all 13 of the women obeyed to the end, although many were highly disturbed and some openly wept”

Am I correct to doubt that this infamous experiment was ever carried out?

Even the most cited reference seems very dubious

Sheridan, C.L. and King, K.G. (1972) Obedience to authority with an authentic victim, Proceedings of the 80th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association 7: 165-6.

I have checked out and found no academic papers on obedience relating to either Sheridan or King

Thanks

Hmmmmm.  Well, C.L. Sheridan really does appear to be an experimental psychologist working in that timeframe; I’ve found other papers written up by him.  King is harder to find, what with that name basically flooding any search engine with results.

1972 was the 80th Annual Convention of the APA, too.  The APA’s website is undergoing restructuring right now, though, so unfortunately their website’s search function isn’t going to well right now.  What search I was able to do found nothing.

I’m actually hoping that it’s not real. I know it sounds silly, but it means that a puppy was not in fact tortured in the name of science.

I feel much the same way about the urban myth of the hippo eating the circus dwarf.

I have a feeling Alex wrote about this type of experiment in Elephants on Acid.  I’d check, but I can’t reach my copy of the book due to having a doggy lap-warmer at the moment.

Heh…Alex did cover both the Milgram and Sheridan experiments…

Do you remember if the Sheridan study was ever published or was just delivered as a speech?

I still find it strange that such a widely cited and controversial study cannot be found anywhere on the internet.

Thanks for your help.

I don’t have my copy of Elephants on Acid anymore (USPS lost a box full of books when I moved. I’m guessing this was in it). However, has anyone emailed Alex to bring his attention to the thread? If he wrote about Sheridan, perhaps he has some good sources.

Alex made the following reference in Elephants…:

Sheridan, C.L., & R.G. King (1972). “Obedience to Authority with an Authentic Victim.” Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association 80:165-66.

So yes, it looks as though the experiment was published.

And Smerk is an authority figure here, so what she says must be true! 

I see.  So I will just accept that this study was carried out even though nobody can say they have actually read it.  Enjoy the rest of the weekend everybody.

Rennet - 10 October 2009 11:51 AM

I see.  So I will just accept that this study was carried out even though nobody can say they have actually read it.  Enjoy the rest of the weekend everybody.

I would guess that Alex probably read the study.  He is very good about researching what he writes about - both on the blog and in his books.  He is quite busy and doesn’t read through the forums much, however, so if you want diret feedback from him about it your best bet will be to PM or email him and ask.  I’m sure he could probably tell you where he read the study for the book.

Rennet - 10 October 2009 11:51 AM

I see.  So I will just accept that this study was carried out even though nobody can say they have actually read it.  Enjoy the rest of the weekend everybody.

Just go to a University library with a psychology department and look it up. That’s what libraries are for, you know?!

People are so lazy nowadays. If it ain’t on-line, it “doesn’t exist” nowadays, in this lazy student’s era.

There is still a lot that has not been digitized yet, especially this kind of proceedings, and many monographs. If you only look for literature on-line, you are severely restricting yourself, and if you think something “doesn’t exist"because it isn’t on-line, you are fooling yourself. Lazy!