We Do What We're Told (Milgram's 37)

Milgram sought to measure obedience and conformity by determining if a participant would demonstrate a willingness to deliver lethal shocks to an individual at the request of an authority figure.

[2] The Milgram experiments, which were falsely presented to the participants as a memory test, were instead intended to observe the willingness of individuals to perform actions that challenged their moral values and personal conscience.

The teacher was instructed by the "experimenter" to administer an electric shock and increase the voltage each time the student failed to correctly answer the question.

[4] Milgram's colleagues believed that only a small percentage of participants would administer the maximum punishment of a 450 volt shock, but the completion rate was higher than anticipated.

[5][6] In Milgram's 18th variation of the experiment, the participants did not directly shock the learner and instead assisted a confederate in carrying out this responsibility by reciting the word-pair test to the student.

[8] Gabriel provided a different explanation for the title in a 1986 interview with Armando Gallo, saying that it referred to Milgram's first variation of the experiment where 37 percent of volunteers refused to obey instructions.

"[2] While recounting his impressions of the book to The Bristol Recorder, Gabriel noted how certain participants attempted to rationalise their decisions to inflict pain on other individuals.

[16] Tim Holmes of Rolling Stone focused on the thematic elements of the lyrics, saying that they signalled a "note of humble resignation" and represented "a brief sigh at the realization that we are programmed by forces outside our control.

[13] In his book Every Album, Every Song, Graeme Scarfe described Gabriel's vocal delivery as "catatonic" and said that the lyrics were akin to a mantra.

However, after consulting with his colleagues, Milgram informed Gabriel in a second phone call that "academic research and entertainment aren't happy bedfellows".

[4] In a concert review of Gabriel's 1980 show in Birmingham, John Orme of Melody Maker described the song as a "mechanically striding piece of Pavlovian investigation".