The Milgram experiment -- thoughts?

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I guess I see a parallel with abortion here. Men in white coats say it’s okay. And women don’t see what’s going on.

Didn’t part of the experiment involve the separation of the two parties? That seems to be key. If a person sees another person, it makes them real, then the dynamic changes. Empathy takes over from procedure.

When a woman sees her child on a sonogram, the child becomes real, and something procedural becomes something empathetic.

I wonder if there is a version of the Millgram experiment in which the person doing the shocking can see the ‘pain’ that they are causing in the other person.
 
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I think they could hear person screaming (fake) in other room but thought it was real.
 
Have you ever read The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer? If you have, what is your opinion of his paper? Thanks in advance!
 
An episode of Tim Harford’s excellant podcast series “Cautionary tales” addresses this experiment. It is interesting. It’s actually an example if getting people to go one step further at a time, and then they get to a point at which stopping would be admitting they have been doing something wrong.

Here is a transcript:

timharford.com

Why we fall for cons

There may be times and places where it’s a good idea to talk back to a military officer — but Germany in 1906 wasn’t one of them. So the young corporal didn’t. The corporal — let’s call him Muller …
timharford.com timharford.com
 
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Of course Altemeyer presents the personality perspective, which is contrary to the situational viewpoint of Milgram. The truth of the matter, as most modern personality and social psychologists agree, is that there is a subtle interaction between personality and situation. If the situation is strong, however, it can overpower the personality so that it does not express itself. That does not mean that the personality is always absent, as Milgram’s study suggests, but rather that it is confined by the social norms. This is not always such a bad thing: conformity and obedience have their place in society and life. The older theory of the authoritarian personality (Adorno’s classic work) is, in my view, a bit too one-sided, not taking into account situational influences outside of the home environment. On the other hand, as I have stated, Milgram is also one-sided, hardly considering personality traits at all, even though one-third of his participants did NOT obey his direct orders, while many of those who did obey were hesitant and anxious, some attempting to cheat by pretending to move onto a higher level of shock.
 
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Yes, this is called the foot-in-the-door phenomenon: proceed by small increments, asking a small favor first, and pretty soon people think of themselves as actually liking the person whom they are helping, because, if not, they would have cognitive dissonance (Leon Festinger’s theory) in which their behavior does not match their thoughts.
 
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I think making a regular examination of conscience would help one guard against such things. We have to be used to admitting to ourselves we have done wrong.
 
I’ve read about Dr Milgram’s experiment and see the chilling possibility in every human being.

I’ve also studied evil in the hopes of discovering where it comes from. The Nazis were one of my subjects of study.

What I’ve discovered in my studies into evil is that most people, by their inherent nature; aren’t evil. Most people become evil by a myriad set of factors that shape the development of the soul.

Take the Nazis for instance.

What happened is that, ensnared by Hitler; latent evil was tapped into and awakened in them and the flames were fanned. Because of basic human drives of self interest/advancement and genuine idealism, outraged nationalism and patriotism to protect Germany from an “ international Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy “.

Essentially, largely good natured and rational people were mesmerized and led into evil to where they became monsters. All to serve a regime that, over time and with constant propaganda; inculcated in them that what they were doing was in the best interest for their society.

Another thing to think about:

I used to watch Homicide Hunter with Det. Joe Kenda. In one of his episodes, he made a chilling and true statement. That anyone can be a killer; if you push them hard enough.
 
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Visual anonymity is one of the many situational influences in this study. It is somewhat easier to inflict pain and suffering, even death, when the target is not visible, as in dropping bombs on countries during wartime or drive-by shootings. Killing someone with a knife, while it does occur, is literally up close and personal.
 
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I agree with you, meltzerboy2.

Killing is a lot easier when it’s impersonal and at a distance where you can’t see the other person.

The reason why the Nazis switched to gas chambers from the roving firing squads they initially used for mass killings of Jews was that the SS men were suffering the psychic trauma of what they were doing.

Himmler sought a way to protect his men’s mental health and created the gas chambers in the death camps. Another way he shielded his men was that the men who removed the bodies from the gas chambers themselves were concentration camp inmates; the Sonderkommandos.

These men would themselves be executed later.
 
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And the gas chamber method of murder was a real-life illustration of yet another situational influence in Milgram’s study, namely, focusing on the details of the mechanism as a means of distraction from the pain being inflicted on others. The participants could distract themselves by concentrating on the knobs and dials of the laboratory equipment rather than paying attention to the screams of the confederates (fake subjects).
 
I see your point, meltzerboy2. My main point is that social indoctrination plays a huge role.
 
Apart from the authority figure of Milgram himself as well as the laboratory setting at Yale University, perhaps one of the biggest influences was what is called diffusion of responsibility. The subjects involved could share the responsibility of what they were doing with Milgram himself, who gave them the order, as well as with the other subjects who were victims of the shocks, since all had chosen to participate and drew straws (which was of course rigged) to see who would be the “teacher” and who the “learner.”
 
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At this point in my life, I can say, if I were the one being told to pull the lever, I’d probably tell them to find someone else to do it… or, I’d ask them so many questions in defiance of their “experiment”, they would kick me off the project…

I tend to think the entire medical system pretty stupid for this reason…

Take sleep science… I visited a sleep doc not too long ago, and I brought up some relevant psyche issues, which she declined to answer on the grounds that “I’m (she herself, not me) not a psychologist…” But I found her comment absurd and dismissive… Sleep and wakefulness are like phases of the moon to me… The moon may be waxing, full, waning, or dark… but it is all still the moon… one cannot separate sleep from consciousness any more than one can separate wakefulness from consciousness… It is especially true if you think about the bearing depression or a bad night’s sleep might have upon one’s ability to think clearly the next day…

And yet somehow modern medicine gave her a way to say sleep medicine is not a form of psychology…

My point is, I guess - if Dr Milgram told me to keep pushing the button, I’d probably tell him I saw no point to it and would prefer a thorough discussion on the mercies and virtues of our Lord Jesus Christ… which is a topic the actor doctor in the experiment probably wouldn’t like, since that characters goal is to get one to comply…

Along these lines, I’ve even had to limit my discussions with shrinks on the same grounds… Several of my psychiatrists have been Jewish, but you cannot get them to understand Christianity… How can they? They haven’t grown up catechized. They haven’t received the sacraments, and the graces they confer. The best you can do seems to be to keep the conversation logical, although you cannot tell them their science disagrees with the faith; for, then, they just wont get the mystical parts of our religion, which go way beyond the limits of what they can understand.

Our faith goes beyond the limits of what I myself understand, too.

The difference is - we share in the same faith, but psychology is not Christianity. Psychology comes nowhere near the mercies of Christianity, as the Milgram experiment clearly demonstrates, for the Milgram experiment is itself nothing but a big charade.
 
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“At this point in my life, I can say, if I were the one being told to pull the lever, I’d probably tell them to find someone else to do it… or, I’d ask them so many questions in defiance of their “experiment”, they would kick me off the project…”

I hope that we would all do this, but would we?

I have often wondered how railway personnel who heard rumors of what happened in the Nazi extermination camps, saw fully loaded trains heading to them, drove the train engines and returned with empty wagons, adjusted tracks and signals to facilitate the running of the railway system and then would end a shift and return home to their families coped with their daily work.

I suspect that abortionists have a similar mental state.

It simply illustrates the Banality of Evil and we are all capable of engaging in it without constant reflection and prayer, I think.
 
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Having read through, I am convinced the experiment is flawed.

It doesn’t tell us anything about the general population, only those willing to respond to the ad taken out in the paper within New Haven.

Perhaps if they found a means of testing randomly across all ages, all professions, and all walks of life they would find different results.
 
It appears Milgram wasn’t totally honest when reporting his research results.

Unpublished data from Stanley Milgram’s experiments cast doubt on his claims about obedience.
“Our analysis shows that people who believed the learner was in pain were two and a half more times likely to defy the experimenter and refuse to give further shocks. We found that contrary to Milgram’s claims, the majority of subjects in the obedience experiments were defiant, and a significant reason for their refusal to continue was to spare the man pain,” Perry said.

[…]

“This upends the traditional narrative about the obedience experiments as a demonstration of our slavish obedience to the orders of authorities and as an explanation for events such as the Holocaust. Our results shift the focus to the issue of defiance of authority, and empathy and altruism as the dominant reactions of subjects who volunteered for this research.”

More links within the article.
Click to expand...
 
That analysis is faulty since

(A) believing you’re actually causing pain to guy in next room as its happening, is much different than
(B) admitting you believed you were causing pain to guy in next room after being told it was just an experiment

Many people will deny belief in (B) even though they were actually believing in (A) since its embarrassing you admit (A). Nobody wants to publicly admit they were duped, much less that they were duped into genuinely believing they were torturing someone
 
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