Posted on 01/06/2009 8:06:43 PM PST by neverdem
A new test of Milgram's obedience experiment asks if it can still happen here.
Don't answer too hastily, but have you ever wondered what you would have done if you grew up in Nazi Germany? Of course, we all hope that we would have had the moral strength to stand against that monstrous regime, but can we be so sure? After all, times were tough and both important politicians and leading intellectuals supported Nazi theories and policies. And then there were the ordinary Germans, friendly neighbors like Karl and Lötte down the street. They had joined the Party and were sending little Wolfgang and Gretchen to healthful Party-sponsored summer camps. Being a Nazi was normal for many Germans. Would things have been any different for you or me if we had been unfortunate enough to grow up at that time and in that place?
The most horrific feature of Nazi and Communist regimes, of course, was their industrial-scale savagery. The Nazis managed to murder six million Jews and 22 million other Europeans. The Soviet Communists exterminated 62 million and the Chinese Communists killed 35 million. While these murders were ordered by vicious dictators, they were actually carried out by ordinary people like Karl and Lötte. Which brings us to the famous obedience studies conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram.
In 1961, Milgram did research involving ordinary residents of New Haven, Connecticut, who participated in an experiment that ostensibly aimed at determining the effect of punishment on learning. Along with the experimenter, the situation involved two subjects, one a "teacher" and the other a "learner." The learner was a confederate of the experimenters, so the teacher was the only actual participant. In the experiment, the learner was supposed to memorize a list of word associations. The learner was strapped down to a chair with an electrode attached to his wrist. To encourage learning, the teacher was to pull switches that would supposedly increase electric shocks from 15-volts up to 450-volts in 15 volt increments. Before the experiment began, both the teacher and the learner were given 45-volt shocks. In addition, the switchers were labeled with warnings such as Slight Shock, Moderate Shock, and so forth, all the way up to Danger: Severe Shock. The final two switches were marked XXX.
As the experiment proceeded, the learner (experimental confederate) would keep making wrong answers. The teacher (experimental subject) would then be instructed by the expermenter to progressively pull the switch for ever higher levels of shock. The learner would begin to make noises expressing pain at 75-volts increasing in loudness until 150-volts, at which point he would urgently demand to be released, complaining of heart palpitations. His complaints would grow louder until 300-volts were reached. At 330-volts the learner fell silent. If the teacher showed signs of wanting to discontinue, the experimenter offered a series of prompts:
The appalling results of these obedience experiments was that 65 percent of participants eventually pulled all of the switches, ultimately reaching the 450-volt level. But perhaps modern Americans would be less susceptible to the demands of authority. After all, the intervening years have seen the rise of the civil rights, peace, and gay rights movements, right? Not necessarily. Last month, Santa Clara University psychologist Jerry Burger reported the results of replicating Milgram's experiment. He excluded people who had heard of the original experiments and found that the average rate of obedience remained the same at around 65 percent. In addition, there was no difference between men and women.
In 1965, Milgram wrote, "With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter's definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts." In 1979, Milgram's judgement was more severe: "If a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would be able to find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized American town."
But can it really happen here? It's a giant step from a Yale psychology lab to Auschwitz and the Gulag. What Milgram showed was that ordinary people are deferential to authority figures in laboratory settings. The exact nature of the authority wielded by experimenters is controversial, but it seems based on both perceived legitimacy and expertise. It doesn't take too much imagination to think that even more people would have gone all the way to 450-volts if the experimenter had the power to punish disobedience. Leaders of governments, militaries, religions, corporations, universities, and gangs all arguably exercise these types of authority. Hierarchy is a universal feature of human societies.
As obedience experiments show, Americans are not really any better at resisting the claims of authority than other people, yet there was no Gulag and no Auschwitz here. True, there was the immense moral evil of slavery, the destruction of Native Americans, Woodrow Wilson's imprisonment of thousands of dissidents, Franklin Roosevelt's internment of Japanese Americans, and more recently, the Abu Ghraib cruelties. Leaders at all levels can persuade some Americans to participate in immoral activities. However, the arc of American history has been toward correcting old evils and the commissioning of fewer atrocities over time. Why? Because our institutions of freedom have maintained and expanded the norms that limit the powers wielded by authorities.
For example, a free press is able to criticize practices like slavery and racial discrimination and help establish new norms. If Bill and Joanne down the street send their kids Joe and Kathy to an ethnically mixed school, in other words, it must be OK. In addition, American governmental powers are fragmented and in competition with one another. As another Milgram experiment showed, if two experimenters disagreed about continuing the experiment, the majority of participants sided with the one who argued for stopping it. In other words, when people could refer to an authority figure who agreed with their moral views, they were much more likely to act on them. Similarly, dividing up governmental power increases the chances that some authorities will act ethically and thus inspire people to act on the dictates of their consciences.
Milgram didn't really explore why it was that Germans created death camps while Americans did not. The answer is liberty. In 1974, Milgram more generously noted, "It is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act." Americans have not escaped the natural human tendency to defer to authority. Instead, we have had the good fortune to find ourselves in the situation where our social institutions have traditionally limited what authorities can get away with. The institutions of liberty are what enable people to act on what Lincoln called, "the better angels of our nature."
Ronald Bailey is reason's science correspondent.
What scares me is the millions of Americans who follow the party line, whose reality is consensus, who allow themselves to be lead by media propaganda, who do not think for themselves.
American politicians and leading intellectuals easily fall prey to cockamamie theories. Both groups once paid homage to the wonderful field of eugenics. Today the same groups administer cackles of derision toward any "simpleton" who fails to keep the faith about the untestable (therefor unscientific) theory of man-made climate change.
Would You Have Been A Nazi?
...isn’t it a little unfair to ask the question having just witness what ACORN, the MSM and the ObamaBots did in 2008?
Of course, it’s still possible. And apparently not just possible but incredibly likely. If Obama sent out one of his email Commandments telling his followers to report all of their neighbors who were not recycling or driving gas guzzlers, there wouldn’t be enough bandwidth to handle the traffic coming back to him.
A Catholic should be patriotic, but when patriotism crosses the line into state-worship or a cult of blood and soil. our obligation ends. When Caesar requires of us more than God allows, we must respectfully refuse to obey Caesar and accept whatever punishment Caesar metes out.
That is pretty harsh for just putting female underwear on the heads of prisoners...
What scares me is the millions of Americans who follow the party line, whose reality is consensus, who allow themselves to be lead by media propaganda, who do not think for themselves.
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Absolutely.
I couldnt conceivably ever be a nazi since i am Jewish, but the central idea is of submitting to a totalitarian state, regardless of the specifics of the ideology.
I was fortunate to study Milgram’s Obedience to Authority studies in an extensive college course taught by two very intelligent professors. It might have been the most interesting and informative course I took in four years. And it is frightening to know that human nature can be manipulated into supporting irrational authority.
>> we have had the good fortune to find ourselves in the situation where our social institutions have traditionally limited what authorities can get away with.
“we have had” but do we still have the good fortune? I’m not sure it matters to half the Country.
Nova had to ruin an otherwise useful episode with Hansen's drivel.
Ironic... President Lincoln was the 1st President that suspended the Habeas Corpus...
Preparing for the Obamajugend I see.
What did folks think those thousands of jobs would come from... brownshirts with little red books and jackboots.
Hey, those voter lists and donor info will come in handy.
The anointed one is ascending, so Abu Ghraib is no longer torture.
It's a hard thing to think about since we are aware of the Holocaust, know the end results.
[ Milgram did research involving ordinary residents of New Haven, Connecticut]
Connecticut again? Good grief, another article is about Transgenders there. Always something weird going on there.
When Caesar becomes a tyrant, he deserves the fate of George III, if not the fate of Saddam Hussein.
Our own success will be our undoing. Economically successful especially post WWII we have become a magnet for those who want the wealth but no part of the dream, who do not share the vision, who don't really understand the meaning of our Constitution and the spirit this nation was founded on. The waves of immigrants pouring into the US post WWII have transformed the US not only the demographics the censuses bureau collects, but more importantly culturally. There are no more Norman Rockwell's, Bob Hope's, or John Wayne's. Someone like Teddy Roosevelt today would be called a war monger. Thomas Jefferson would be seen as a radical and closely monitored since he after all said stuff like “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
The problem is that today we no longer have assimilation, immigration has been out of control and we actually have politically correct laws in place that ENSURE we even celebrate diversity in our immigration (That part which is legal). The ignorance you speak of is a consequence of the wealth/complacency as well. Complacency and immigration-
>>When Caesar becomes a tyrant, he deserves the fate of George III, if not the fate of Saddam Hussein.<<
Exactly right.
Article One, US Constitution: "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it."
If the Great Rebellion wasn't an example of an appropriate suspension of habeas corpus, what do you think the Founders had in mind?
There is no more appreciation of where we came from or how we got here. Everything is taken for granted. Therefore, no sense of belonging to something unique and exceptional. American exceptionalism is no longer part of the glue that used to bind us together as “Americans”. It’s very sad.
It’s all about eugenics and all of the insidious branches.
Same beast, different names.
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