The Milgram experiment -- thoughts?

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If you’re not familiar with the Milgram experiment, read about it HERE.

Here is a quote from Stanley Milgram about the results –

“The results… raise the possibility that human nature, or – more specifically – the kind of character produced in American democratic society, cannot be counted on to insulate its citizens from brutality and inhumane treatment at the direction of malevolent authority.” -Stanley Milgram
 
Most terrifying thing I’ve ever learned about. If I recall, it was something like all of the subjects were willing to shock the person unconscious and 2/3 were willing to shock the person to death…with no armed guards in the room. Just a man telling to keep increasing the current.

Also eerie was how if the guy had a notepad and clipboard, it was slightly higher percentange. Or if he had a white coat, it was even higher percentage.

What it tells me is that the human condition is so weak to authority that it is willing to kill another at mere order by someone with mere apparent authority (not actual authority).

A real reason to push back on any kind of totalitarianism (socialism, communism, fascism, etc) of any kind
 
There’s always people who blindly follow bad leaders and others who don’t. We don’t really need some experiment to tell us this.

People have been harping on the Milgram experiment since I was a child, and I’ve yet to read anything focusing on those who refused to continue with the experiment.
 
It is noteworthy that when the “scientist” figure told the subject they had “no other choice but to continue,” 100% of subjects refused. But as long as they were merely told “please continue,” they kept upping the voltage.
 
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Really? I thought I read they did all proceed with “you have no choice but to continue” , now I’ll have to go read it again thanks 🙂
 
The person who played scientist had something like four responses they could issue in a neutral voice. They were not allowed to say anything but one of those four responses. They increased in their sternness from the first to the fourth (the fourth being “you have no choice”). And what I heard from someone a while back was that for all those who made it to that level, they refused.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
There’s always people who blindly follow bad leaders and others who don’t. We don’t really need some experiment to tell us this.

People have been harping on the Milgram experiment since I was a child, and I’ve yet to read anything focusing on those who refused to continue with the experiment.
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Probably because they weren’t the statistically relevant finding in the experiment.

OP, have you read about the subsequent variations of the experiment that Milgram did?
 
Searching1 said:
Nope. Tell me about them 🙂
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So the most interesting thing to me about them was the finding that if there’s even one other person expressing doubt, the subject is far more likely to resist giving electrical shocks.

It’s incredibly important to remember that the study was undertaken in the wake of the Holocaust and Milgram specifically considered this historical occurrence when crafting the experiment. The goal, in part, was to understand how seemingly ordinary citizens could become accomplices in a genocide.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
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gracepoole:
Probably because they weren’t the statistically relevant finding in the experiment.
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That may be, but they are the ones we’re supposed to be trying to emulate, so wouldn’t it be helpful to the world to know more about them?
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Maybe but that wasn’t Milgram’s point. His study was a psychological experiment in obedience, not a moral experiment in resistance.
 
Milgrim is part of the problem, in that case. Not part of the solution.

Like I said, nobody, at least in my lifetime, has needed an experiment to understand that a lot of people will blindly follow bad leaders and a lot of otherwise nice-seeming people are capable of evil if they’re encouraged by a leader or a group. In other words, peer pressure.

Maybe this was big news before I was born or something. Nowadays it’s more like an ordinary day at the office.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
Milgrim is part of the problem, in that case. Not part of the solution.

Like I said, nobody, at least in my lifetime, has needed an experiment to understand that a lot of people will blindly follow bad leaders and a lot of otherwise nice-seeming people are capable of evil if they’re encouraged by a leader or a group. In other words, peer pressure.

Maybe this was big news before I was born or something. Nowadays it’s more like an ordinary day at the office.
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Since you added to your post…

You seem to be assuming that we’ve always known that people blindly follow. You can, then, readily explain how a moral Christian could suddenly shoot Jews into an open grave and take delight in doing so? You’ve grown up in a post-Milgram world and I’d respectfully claim that his experiments have influenced you far more than you realize.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
People have been harping on the Milgram experiment since I was a child, and I’ve yet to read anything focusing on those who refused to continue with the experiment.
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This.

How does one “insulate” oneself against following the crowd?

I like to think that I’d be the one who said no, but sometimes, context cues change how we look at a situation, and in-the-moment decisions are sometimes different than choices we make when we have time to think through the situation.

A modern day real life scenario is where the family of a patient who is terminal and end of life, or maybe not (these cases aren’t always black and white) and the HCPs wind up convincing the family to withdraw ordinary means of care, and it all happens so fast in a stressful environment.
We get these types of questions here from time to time (“should we have made mom a DNR?”)

The Milgram experiment was a very artificial and controlled environment, and I’m not sure if it explained why ordinary Germans turned into Nazi party members, although there were some interesting insights.
 
As a social psychologist, I include this study in my Social Psychology classes. It has many situational determinants but is nonetheless chilling and has given social psychologists a bad name by presenting the strong argument against personality traits and free will in favor of the power of the situation to control our behavior.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
Like I said, nobody, at least in my lifetime, has needed an experiment to understand that a lot of people will blindly follow bad leaders and a lot of otherwise nice-seeming people are capable of evil if they’re encouraged by a leader or a group. In other words, peer pressure.
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That would be true if that’s all the experiment showed but it didn’t. It showed the extent and scope of how far people are willing to go and what percentage of people are willing to go that far. Nuance is key here. Its not a simply binary conclusion of “yes , peer pressure exists”
 
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