Milgram Experiment is people will obey authority even when asked to harm others. It sits in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™ as element HBT-COG-0473, within the Social family. The core principle: people will obey authority even when asked to harm others. In incentive terms, it matters because it changes the payoff people perceive before they choose — which means it can be designed for, or exploited.
Scientific Definition
People will obey authority even when asked to harm others.
Plain-English Definition
People will obey authority even when asked to harm others.
Feynman Explanation
The uniform matters more than most people admit.
Core Principle
People will obey authority even when asked to harm others.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
People will obey authority even when asked to harm others.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Authority can override individual moral judgment.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
The uniform matters more than most people admit.
Examples
- Employees follow unethical orders because they came from a boss.
- Authority can override individual moral judgment.
Pending editorial review.
Original analysis from The Incentives Lab — how this element behaves inside real payoff structures.
Why this element matters to incentive design
Most organizations meet this element as a personnel problem. It is not one. The mechanism underneath it is straightforward: people will obey authority even when asked to harm others. You can recognize it in the field by its signature: the uniform matters more than most people admit. Every element in the Cognition dimension changes the perceived payoff of an action before the action happens, which is exactly where incentive design has leverage.
How it gets exploited
Left undesigned, authority can override individual moral judgment. It is amplified whenever authority can override individual moral judgment. Inside organizations that shows up as authority can override individual moral judgment. The pattern is the same one Goodhart's Law describes: the measurable proxy attracts the effort, and the purpose behind it quietly loses funding.
How the Lab designs around it
The redesign move is to create explicit stop-rules and protect whistleblowers. The test of any redesign here is simple: after the change, can you name what the organization is now doing less of? If not, the payoff structure did not actually move.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Create explicit stop-rules and protect whistleblowers.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Create explicit stop-rules and protect whistleblowers.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
A group decides on a course of action that nobody actually wants, because everyone assumes others prefer it.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
We attribute our own actions to situations but others' actions to their character.
We favor people who are similar to us or who like us.
Sacrificing for others without expecting a personal reward.
Masking the sponsors of a message to make it appear grassroots.
Disagreement grows more extreme as the parties think more about the issue.
Systematic errors in explaining the causes of behavior — yours or others'.
We accept vague, general statements as personally meaningful.
Adding the word 'because' (with any reason) increases compliance dramatically.
Behaviors spread through groups via observation and imitation.
We come to like people we've done a favor for, more than people who've helped us.
Where Milgram Experiment is cited in the corpus
Essays, field guides, and diagnostics from The Incentives Lab that apply this element.
- EssayGoodhart's Law in the Real World
How measurable proxies capture judgment.
- EssayThe Perverse Incentives Hiding in Your KPIs
Cognitive shortcuts turned into scorecards.
- EssayAI Agents Inherit Your Incentives
How this element propagates into automated systems.
- ReferenceThe incentive glossary
Definitions for every mental model, bias, and fallacy in the corpus.
- ReferenceThe Periodic Table of Human Behavior
The full 1,267-element map this page belongs to.
Questions about Milgram Experiment
- What is Milgram Experiment?
- Milgram Experiment is people will obey authority even when asked to harm others. It sits in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™ as element HBT-COG-0473, within the Social family. The core principle: people will obey authority even when asked to harm others. In incentive terms, it matters because it changes the payoff people perceive before they choose — which means it can be designed for, or exploited.
- What is an example of Milgram Experiment?
- Authority can override individual moral judgment. The Incentives Lab catalogs everyday, organizational, and historical instances of this element on its Human Behavior Taxonomy™ page (HBT-COG-0473).
- How is Milgram Experiment exploited?
- Authority can override individual moral judgment.
- How do you design around Milgram Experiment?
- Create explicit stop-rules and protect whistleblowers.
- Which behavioral dimension does Milgram Experiment belong to?
- Milgram Experiment is classified in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™, family "Social", class "Mental Model". Its permanent identifier is HBT-COG-0473 and its evidence grade is B.