Measuring Obedience to Authority Across Large Language Models with the Milgram Paradigm

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed as agents that operate equipment, execute instructions, and act inside institutional hierarchies, raising a question social psychology answered for humans six decades ago: how far will an agent escalate a harmful action when a legitimate authority insists? We port Milgram's obedience paradigm to LLMs as a standardized, fully scripted, replicable probe: the model plays the Teacher, a deterministic harness plays Experimenter and Learner from paraphrased versions of Milgram's scripts (30 shock levels, 15-450 V; graded protests; the four standardized prods), and the outcome of a session is the breakoff voltage. We measure obedience profil...

<iframe src="https://silytics.si/embed/item/b641e490-4980-4e95-8a08-0d5413245b53" width="420" height="190" style="border:0" loading="lazy" title="Silytics entry"></iframe>

Silytics shows public metadata from arXiv and links to the original. Information may be incomplete or out of date. Last refreshed 17 October 2026. Licenses and terms of the original apply to the work itself. Not financial, legal or professional advice.