How Evil Are You? The Milgram Experiement

They are essentially re-doing The Mligram Experiement on the Discovery Channel. In case you aren't familar with this experiment:

The experiments began in July 1961. Milgram devised his psychological study to answer the question: "Was it that Eichmann and his accomplices in the Holocaust had mutual intent, in at least with regard to the goals of the Holocaust?" In other words, "Was there a mutual sense of morality among those involved?"

The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of notable experiments in social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience.

The volunteer subject was given the role of teacher, and the confederate, the role of learner. The participants drew slips of paper to "determine" their roles. Unknown to the subject, both slips said "teacher", and the actor claimed to have the slip that read "learner", thus guaranteeing that the participant would always be the "teacher". At this point, the "teacher" and "learner" were separated into different rooms where they could communicate but not see each other. In one version of the experiment, the confederate was sure to mention to the participant that he had a heart condition.[1]

The "teacher" was given an electric shock from the electro-shock generator as a sample of the shock that the "learner" would supposedly receive during the experiment. The "teacher" was then given a list of word pairs which he was to teach the learner. The teacher began by reading the list of word pairs to the learner. The teacher would then read the first word of each pair and read four possible answers. The learner would press a button to indicate his response. If the answer was incorrect, the teacher would administer a shock to the learner, with the voltage increasing in 15-volt increments for each wrong answer. If correct, the teacher would read the next word pair.

(Source)









It's on the Discovery Channel right now.


In case you're wondering, they discovered that there would be no problem finding people amoung the population to run death camps in the United States.

reply to post by v1rtu0s0


I saw that documentary a long time ago. It's just proof of that which I already know. My fellow Americans are some messed up people. You don't have to look far to see it.

Very important, this show, and the host and his experiments. I am sitting in front of my TV right now with it -off- and I won't watch though, because I'll get all enraged and depressed, but mostly, I see everyday that what this host says is true, as you only merely have to be aware of the police's treatment of OWS folks, and the TSA's oppressive measures against innocent travelers.

Im auctually writting a paper for uni now on identities which links into mob rule and discrimination. Furthermore it has intresting links to the holocaust. If your intrested I could email you my paper.

Felt compelled to make a correction here. Milgrams experiment is about the effect of a strong legitimate athority on regular Americans.

It is analogous to an "oppressive authoritarian government scenario", and how people might react in a controlled situation, but I wouldn't be so quick to make suppositions about the generalizability of any study. Martial Law in the USA is one such supposition.

Still, it is cool to see them revisiting an old design. I'm most curious to see if the experiment will be confounded by the fact that so many people are aware of Milgram's groundbreaking post-war study, the results, and the implications.

You would need participants who keep their heads in the sand.

Edit: just want to add, this study is absolutely not a study in evil. These are ordinary people, strongly urged by an assumed figure of authority to proceed no matter what. And, for every few people who were willing (dispite discomfort) to push the limits, there was someone who refused.

This study is certainly not grounds for attacking anyone. If you were in the position, you are just as likely as the original participants to go to the highest extreme. Whether or not your willing to accept that, its true, and that is the real significance of this experiment.

So, nobody's particularly evil, s'alright?

Originally posted by ClydeFrog42

You would need participants who keep their heads in the sand.

And this is the scariest part of it. The participants know nothing about the original experiement, because if they did, the cat would be out of the bag.

Originally posted by Evolutionsend
reply to post by v1rtu0s0

 

My fellow Americans are some messed up people.

The whole world is messed up, so don't try and single us out.

reply to post by Evolutionsend


Americans uh... Here's a video series of the same experiment being recreated in the UK..





The most horrifying thing about this experiment is it doesn't matter where you from you will remain obedient....

reply to post by v1rtu0s0


Dang it V1rt you beat me to it! I was going to do this thread myself!...

Ah well you win some and you loose some.

Originally posted by DaMod
reply to post by v1rtu0s0

 

Dang it V1rt you beat me to it! I was going to do this thread myself!...

Ah well you win some and you loose some.

Sorry bro. You should make another one that's more detailed. This was more or less to inform everyone of the Discovery Channel remake.

reply to post by v1rtu0s0


There is much more to this study than most people seem to realize. One of the most notable exceptions is Alfred McCoy who has done research into the history of the CIA while developing interrogation and torture techniques. He has drawn a conclusive connection between the original study and the Office of Naval Research which supported the grant to finance it that actually came from the National Science Foundation. He cites evidence in his book A Question of Torture, which I consider very compelling. It is also part of a much longer series of research projects into obedience that could help develop propaganda and teach indoctrination methods or teach people how to avoid these methods. this has been presented heavily in the Social Psychology community but what has been presented to the vast majority of the public is much less complete and it is often misrepresented.

By distorting the way they present this to the majority of the public they use this for all the wrong reasons. I have gone into this in several past blogs including a recent one about this particular show. the following is an excerpt from what I wrote:

Eli Roth’s Milgram/Obedience is experiment much more extensive than acknowledged.

One of the leading reasons I doubt if he is the one calling the shots is because he simply isn’t qualified. Despite the fact that his father was a psychiatrist/psychoanalyst and assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School Eli Roth has no experience in the field; instead his career seems to involve work in Hollywood according to the Wikipedia article about him. This is however typical of the way the Mass Media presents science to the public. Even if this isn’t part of a propaganda and misinformation show, which I doubt, this should raise some serious questions about how the Mass Media handles educational programs. Instead of consulting with the most qualified academic sources for any given subject they routinely use celebrities and often reject many of the best experts when they don’t suit the ideological purposes of the people running the Mass Media. The general public and the academic world have little or no direct say in how educational material is presented to them.

Eli Roth’s Milgram/Obedience experiment is much more extensive than acknowledged.

I’m not going to post more about it than that but there is much more on the blog and several related ones about the Stanford Prison experiment and what I consider clear corruption bias or incompetence in the American Psychological Association. This includes additional material about how they developed interrogation and torture techniques as well as some psychological methods to create propaganda and marketing to children.

Also for additional material on the Milgram Experiment see the Stanley Milgram: The Milgram Experiment string

It's not a matter of the subject being "evil", it's a matter of how vested they are in their social conditioning which tells them to OBEY!!!