Milgram's 1963 obedience experiment is still a disquieting study today

Pioneer Press ^ | 07/16/2013 | Richard Chin

[Sopater]

I find this experiment fascinating...

[GraceG]

We should put all poticians through this test and if they fail, kick them out.

[mountainlion]

The liberals are giving us greater and more violent “shocks” now. What will they do next.

[billybudd]

You'd like the movie Compliance from last year, based on a series of 70 prank calls across 30 states in the mid-2000s.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1971352/?ref_=sr_1

When a prank caller convinces a fast food restaurant manager to interrogate an innocent young employee, no-one is left unharmed. Based on true events.

[HiTech RedNeck]

I got to wonder how many said “Fie on your evil experiment” as soon as they got wind of what it was. I hope most, and unless they were clued in that it was fake, a lot would have gone on to call police on them.

[Uncle Miltie]

I’m reading “Tombstone”, about Mao’s murder by starvation of 45,000,000 Chinese in 1957-1960.

The Chinese never seem to have revolted against their masters.

Their masters (commies) were well fed, and beat the holy heck out of anyone and everyone. There was virtually never resistance within or against the torturers.

Wow. 45M dead and nary a whimper.

Buy a gun. Develop a spine. Speak your mind. Go down fighting.

[HiTech RedNeck]

All this study about obedience and not a thought to spirituality, the only source from which imperatives can come. Talk about a miss is as good as a mile....

[BenLurkin]

[SoCal Pubbie]

Not sure you can draw a direct parallel to supporting the gassing of minorities and suppressing all dissent to a situation you know is an experiment but may feel you don’t know all the parameters of why inflicting pain is required.

[Sopater]

Yeah, that was based on a true story.



I can't believe that it ever went nearly that far.

[HiTech RedNeck]

A people-worshiping group. We take the impulse to freedom as though it were some kind of physical birthright. It isn’t. We had to learn about it and accept it. The Christian, or at least quasi-biblical, philosophies of America’s founders had everything to do with why freedom was so prized, and why it is still prized by those who either believe or have been closely influenced by the conduct of believers (the latter category can include staunch atheists).

[billybudd]

I think we can call these people spiritually corrupt.

[Larry Lucido]

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

The Stanford Prison Experiment is up there, too.

[longtermmemmory]

see NAACP.

you must vote democrat for your rights to continue

you must vote democart for your FREE STUFF

[HiTech RedNeck]

Classic biblical theology is that man is a fallen creature subject to sin and death, and needing redeeming. The group doing the study (and the group that persisted in doing the evil things in the study) may be bad in a particularly marked way, but we’re all in that boat. At least the study did serve the purpose of highlighting evil, though the experimenters, imprisoned in a naturalistic philosophy, never bothered to write about it in such terms.

[Red Badger]

BFLR...........

[cripplecreek]

Seems like there was behavioral another experiment conducted by a college back in the 60s that got out of hand and ended with some participants enduring and inflicting some pretty severe abuses.

As I recall half the students were guards and the other half prisoners. When the prisoners decided that they had had enough, the guards refused to turn them loose and fell into bizarre power and torture cycle.

[cripplecreek]

The Stanford Prison Experiment is up there, too.

That must be the one I'm thinking of.

I suspect such experiments would have had different results if they had used people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. When you're in your 20s your personality and ethical development are practically embryonic compared to where you'll be at 50.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

I suspect such experiments would have had different results if they had used people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s.

Absolutely correct. The older the subjects, the less likely they are to obey.