Milgram experiment

[Luis G]

Found this study while reading about the roots of nazism.

The experiments began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiments to answer this question: "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?"

Milgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article, "The Perils of Obedience", writing:

The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.

Full article

 

[unclehobart]

I remember those experiments. It was a hotbed for a whole decade of psychology papers and argumentation. Regardless of how civilized we think we've trained ourselves to be, the proto monkey-man wolf brain of pack instinct lies just beneath and can assert control in a flash.

 

[SouthernN'Proud]

I'd read some of that in college. Pretty scary stuff. The one factor I found particularly intriguing was fear. Many of these people did what they did because they (at least claimed to be) scared they might end up on the receiving end if they didn't. Speaks volumes to the basest of human motivation I'd say.

 

[unclehobart]

Self preservation is the root sum of all life, my friend. It will do whatever it takes.

 

[SouthernN'Proud]

Precisely. At least in the overwhelming majority of folk. Thus the popularity of the Saw movies.

 

[chcr]

I remember video (well, probably film) from these or similar experiments. It was horrifying to me to watch these ordinary people inflicting (supposed) pain on people who were screaming for mercy simply because that's what they were ordered to do. A lot of them (as I understood it) were never threatened with similar treatment (although they certainly might have made such a connection in their minds). Frightening really. Even more frightening to contemplate what my reaction might have been. Easy enough to say you wouldn't, but...