Stanley Milgram, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The proximity series was designed around a single question: does it matter, psychologically, how close you are to the person you are harming? The answer is yes, and the gradient is sharp. Across four conditions, as the victim was brought progressively nearer to the subject, obedience fell — from 65% when the victim was in a separate room and could not be heard at all, down to 30% when the subject had to press the learner's hand onto the shockplate himself.1
That is not a small effect. It runs across the full range of the procedure and it is orderly. What is striking is that this drop cannot be explained by subjects simply perceiving more pain in the closer conditions. When subjects were asked to estimate how much pain the victim was experiencing, there were no consistent differences across conditions.2
The victim's suffering, as rated, was roughly equivalent whether he was remote or inches away. So the mechanism is not that proximity revealed more agony, which then caused more reluctance. Something else is happening. Two processes seem to account for most of it. The first is empathic cuing. In the remote conditions, the victim's suffering has an abstract quality — the subject knows, in a conceptual sense, that his actions cause pain, but the fact is apprehended and not felt.3
The bombardier analogy is exact: a man can reason his way to the conclusion that his weapons kill people and remain emotionally untouched by that conclusion. Visual cues change this. They may trigger empathic responses that are themselves aversive, possessing drive properties that push the subject toward terminating the situation.4 The second process is denial and the narrowing of the cognitive field.
In the remote condition, a subject can genuinely put the victim out of mind — stop associating the act of pressing a lever with any particular consequence for any particular person.5 One subject put it plainly: "It's funny how you really begin to forget that there's a guy out there, even though you can hear him. For a long time I just concentrated on pressing the switches and reading the words." When the victim is close, this maneuver is no longer available.6
He intrudes continuously on the visual field; he cannot be phenomenologically excluded. The behavior in the pilot studies made this dynamic visible before the main series was run. Subjects who could dimly see the victim through a silvered glass would avert their eyes, turn their heads away in conspicuous and awkward ways.7 One explained: "I didn't want to see the consequences of what I had done." And yet — and this is the datum that stays with me — although the subject refuses to look, he continues to administer shocks.8
The avoidance of the victim's face is itself evidence that the victim's presence registers as something to be managed, something that exerts pressure. Psychosocial proximity is, in that sense, the degree to which the victim remains a morally salient presence in the subject's awareness — and the experiments show that salience can be engineered, reduced, and that when it is reduced, harm follows more easily.
Percentage obedient subjects: 65.0%, 62.5%, 40.0%, 30.0%Obedience to Authority, An Experimental View
There are no consistent differences in the attributed level of pain across the four conditions (i.e. the amount of pain experienced by the victim as estimated by the subject and expressed on a 14-point scale).The Individual in a Social World, Essays and Experiments, pp. 165–166
In the Remote and, to a lesser extent, the Voice Feedback conditions, the victim's suffering possesses an abstract, remote quality for the subject. He is aware, but only in a conceptual sense, that his actions cause pain to another person; the fact is apprehended, but not felt.The Individual in a Social World, Essays and Experiments, pp. 165–166
It is possible that the visual cues associated with the victim's suffering trigger empathic responses in the subject and provide him with a more complete grasp of the victim's experience. Or it is possible that the empathic responses are themselves unpleasant, possessing drive properties which cause the subject to terminate the arousal situation.The Individual in a Social World, Essays and Experiments, pp. 165–166
The Remote condition allows a narrowing of the cognitive field so that the victim is put out of mind. The subject no longer considers the act of depressing a lever relevant to moral judgment, for it is no longer associated with the victim's suffering.The Individual in a Social World, Essays and Experiments, pp. 165–166
It's funny how you really begin to forget that there's a guy out there, even though you can hear him. For a long time I just concentrated on pressing the switches and reading the words.The Individual in a Social World, Essays and Experiments, pp. 165–166
Subjects frequently averted their eyes from the person they were shocking, often turning their heads in an awkward and conspicuous manner.Obedience to Authority, An Experimental View
One subject explained: 'I didn't want to see the consequences of what I had done.'The Individual in a Social World, Essays and Experiments, pp. 164–165