The Milgram Experiments

Back in the day, a very odd man called Stanley Milgram wanted to explore social psychology with a view to understanding human behavior and maybe helping get a handle on atrocities like the holocaust.  He set up an experiment where volunteers would come in and be told that they and another volunteer (really a confederate), after a coin toss, would take the roles of quizmaster and victim, and that the quizmaster would be required to shock the victim (confederate) with electricity if he gave a wrong answer.  The dial on the shock meter was marked in 45  volt increments and went to 450.  Somewhere around 200V was marked 'XXX', and the volunteer quizmaster would get a 45V shock (which is a fair kick) to see what it was like.  The subject of quizzing would not get many right, and the shocks would escalate with the confederate hamming it up - and the test was, when do people refuse to continue?  The result was that a great many people would proceed all the way, well into and beyond what they had reason to believe were lethal shocks - 70% was not unusual.  Factors that helped:

• encouragement from the supervisor, and specifically the words 'you have no choice, the experiment must continue.'
• the power of the encouragement was affected by the dress, proximity, loudness, attentiveness of the supervisor
• remoteness of the subject.  The more vivid and real the subject was, the more and earlier people refused. However, some people, when asked, where willing to hold the subjects hand to the electrified plate late in the experiment when the shocks were getting too large for the 'victim'.

So much, so interesting, and by now a pretty familiar experiment.  Certainly not the sort of thing you are allowed to do now, because once Milgram's approval was absent or withdrawn and people started to reflect on possibly shocking another person to death, many experienced profound guilt and self-disgust. We do well to remember that we're all just some very inexpensive theatre away from being talked into things that horrify us in other company.

The question I have is 'what about good?'  How much of this participation comes from the fact that we would all quite like to electrocute a stranger, given a chance?  A counterpart experiment that I would like to see is a condition where you have to share a cupcake or donate some time to the subject.  I'd like to see Stanley Milgram persuade a person into that!