Skypawalker's Mindscape

Milgram Questions - Social Penalty Traps

The question "What makes a woman attractive?" is a unique type of framing known as a Milgram Question. In these situations, the social penalty for an unflattering answer is much higher than the reward for telling the truth.

Named after the famous Milgram psychology experiment where electric shocks were administered for wrong answers. Because of this, we simply can't trust the answers we receive, even if they're coming from friends. Other famous Milgram Questions that similarly back you into a corner:

  • "When did you stop beating your wife?"

  • "Does your dad know you're gay?"

  • "Why are white people/men/heterosexuals so ignorant to racism/misogyny/homophobia?"

Any conventional answer to the question confirms its assumption. You are left trapped. It's kind of like an ascended version of a Kafka Trap ~ a fallacy where if someone denies being X it is taken as evidence that the person is X since someone who is X would deny being X.

If someone is accused of something, and if they defend themselves then it's considered proof of their guilt. It lumps together people who genuinely are not guilty of a perceived offence in with people who have committed the perceived offence and are trying to escape punishment.

To escape the trap you need to call out the question. But in practice you don't see this type of situation happen much, it's really just a rhetorical gimmick.

The most important and common type of trick question sounds more like "Do you love Big Brother?" It's a question where an unacceptable answer, regardless of whether it's true or false, will be punished, and the punishment is greater than the reward for a true answer.

Some Milgram Questions are intended as genuine questions. But often they only pretend to be a query on the semantic content of the words. The question "Do you love Big Brother" is actually asking "Do you submit to my power?" Or more generally, "Will you agree with me, or suffer the consequences?"

"When punishment for what people say becomes widespread, people stop saying what they really think and instead say whatever is needed to thrive in the social environment. Thus, limits on speech become limits on sincerity" ~ h/t J. Sanilac & Gurwinder Bhogal


Chris Williamson | @chriswillx

Milgram Questions - Social Penalty Traps