[HN Gopher] Obedience to Authority: The Experiments by Stanley M...
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Obedience to Authority: The Experiments by Stanley Milgram
Author : maremmano
Score : 57 points
Date : 2021-01-25 07:37 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.age-of-the-sage.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.age-of-the-sage.org)
| JadeNB wrote:
| I think the title is missing a colon; for grammar reasons, it
| strongly seems that "The Experiments ..." is the subtitle.
| PJDK wrote:
| My major problem with Milgram is about the "learner". As far as
| the participants of the experiment are told the learner is, like
| them a volunteer. That means the learner has just as much
| autonomy to end the experiment as the teacher.
|
| So why isn't the learner calling an end to the experiment - why
| should this be on the teacher to call it quits? Either the
| learner is making a fuss, but that's just how they react to a bit
| of pain (think about how people can squeal getting into a cold
| bath voluntarily) but they are happy to continue. Alternatively
| they are being actively coerced into continuing - in which case
| the correct response for the teacher is what exactly?
|
| Maybe try and jump the supervisor and make a bolt for the door?
| You are clearly trapped by some kind of sadistic serial killer
| and you are unlikely to make it out alive.
| stretchcat wrote:
| Here's my problem with it: when the 'Experimenter' appealed to
| the necessity of science, compliance rates where highest. When
| the Experimenter appealed to pure authority and gave direct
| commands, compliance rates were low.
|
| The experiments were performed in a proud university town. What
| Milgram actually demonstrated is that those people trust
| scientists and believe in the value of science. In other words,
| they obeyed commands _when those commands seemed to align with
| their preexisting worldview and ideology_.
|
| The inspiration of these experiments was Adolf Eichmann's plea
| that he was merely following orders. Milgram _obstensibly_ set
| out to disprove that, but is said to have inadvertently proved
| Eichmann 's plea plausible; if Milgram showed that people do
| follow orders, then maybe Eichmann's innocence plea was
| plausible. But we know Eichmann was not simply following
| orders. There is ample evidence that he was enthusiastic about
| the Holocaust and went above and beyond what was required of
| him. Eichmann may have been following orders, but they were
| orders he was ideologically aligned with. Just like the Milgram
| subjects were ideologically aligned with the value of science.
|
| Many variations on the Milgram experiment were conducted. When
| the Experimenter didn't dress like a scientist, compliance was
| lower. I didn't hear this until years after I was told about
| the experiments in my undergrad psychology class. When I
| learned this, I felt deceived. It turns the mainstream
| conclusion on it's head.
|
| If we were to run a modern experiment more applicable to
| Eichmann's 'following orders' plea, the Experimenter would be
| dressed like a cop and the Learner would be a black man. How
| many people (except the overtly racist) would follow orders in
| this scenario, when the orders were so flagrantly in violation
| of their personal values? Virtually none I assert. That's the
| obvious _water is wet_ answer, while Milgram 's answer is the
| shockingly unintuitive headline grabbing conclusion. Milgram's
| conclusion asks us to believe there is an Adolf Eichmann
| lurking inside all of us, waiting for heinous orders to
| execute. That just doesn't jive with what we actually know
| about Nazis.
| kebman wrote:
| Because the "learner" was an actor.
| zajio1am wrote:
| Seems to me that conclusion from Milgram experiment are usually
| overblown. I would guess that 'teachers' just assume safety of
| the procedure and consent of 'learners' based on context. So it
| is not really about obedience vs moral imperatives but more
| about trust of authority vs. doubts based on personal
| observation.
| K0balt wrote:
| But that is precisely the point. Trust in authority vs direct
| observation, and the shifting of the Overton window to create
| reduced trust in direct observations vs authoritative
| direction.
| jbullock35 wrote:
| > So why isn't the learner calling an end to the experiment
|
| The learner does repeatedly call for an end to the experiment.
| For example, here is the script for the learner when the shock
| supposedly reaches 150 volts: "Ugh! Experimenter! That's all.
| Get me out of here. I told you I had heart trouble. My heart's
| starting to bother me now. Get me out of here, please. My
| heart's starting to bother me. I refuse to go on. Let me out."
|
| See the start of Chapter 7 of _Obedience to Authority_ for more
| details.
|
| > Maybe try and jump the supervisor and make a bolt for the
| door?
|
| In the baseline "voice feedback" condition, the learner is
| strapped into a chair. He can't bolt. I think that the same is
| true for all other conditions, too.
| PJDK wrote:
| I'm saying that the correct response for the teacher is to
| try and overpower the researchers and escape.
|
| If the learner is strapped to a chair and being totally
| ignored then why should the "teacher" assume they themselves
| have the power to end this experiment?
| jbullock35 wrote:
| I see. Milgram's answer is: for the "teacher," there is no
| need to overpower the researcher (Milgram called him the
| "experimenter") in order to end the experiment. The teacher
| can just walk away. (And then, if he sees fit, he can call
| the police or otherwise report the experimenter.)
|
| Milgram was at pains to construct a situation in which
| there wasn't even an implied threat from the experimenter.
| When teachers protest that they don't want to continue, the
| harshest thing that the experimenter says is "You have no
| choice; you must go on." Milgram wanted to see how obedient
| people might be when there wasn't even an implied threat of
| force. (And he found that 65% of subjects were willing to
| deliver the maximum shock under these conditions.)
| nsajko wrote:
| Some more criticism of the experiment:
| https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/12/12/interviews-with-milgram...
|
| Regardless of the scientific value of the experiment, the
| original documentary might be interesting, because of the
| experiment's influence apparent in textbooks and pop culture:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdrKCilEhC0
| motohagiography wrote:
| If Milgram's experimental method were discredited or debunked,
| should we conclude that, in fact, the findings were that the
| average person will revolt against an unjust authority, and
| therefore we should interpret a lack of pervasive popular revolt
| as a sign of justness and legitimacy of the authorities?
|
| "Nobody else seems to have a problem with it, it must be just
| you. Help is available for people struggling with mental health
| issues and change is sometimes uncomfortable, especially for
| people accustomed to privilege, maybe it's time for some self-
| care, citizen..."
| adolph wrote:
| Is lack of revolt a sign of rule justification or reflective of
| the adaptive power of preference falsification?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "should we conclude that, in fact, the findings were that the
| average person will revolt against an unjust authority,"
|
| History has repeatedly shown that a significant number of
| people will actively play along and almost nobody will revolt.
| Otherwise the Nazi war crimes and Holocaust, My Lai, the purges
| and gulags under Stalin or the Khmer Rouge wouldn't have
| happened. All these needed significant participation from a lot
| of average people. History also shows that no culture (as in
| religion or a certain part of the world) is immune from that.
| swirepe wrote:
| >we should interpret a lack of pervasive popular revolt as a
| sign of justness and legitimacy of the authorities?
|
| "Shock that person, please."
|
| "What? No."
|
| "I forgot to mention, he said he wants to steal your job and
| sell drugs to your kids"
|
| "Thank you for giving me a chance to shock that person. I'm
| glad you were here to keep me safe."
| corpMaverick wrote:
| Voltaire: "Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities, Can
| Make You Commit Atrocities"
|
| Hey loved followers: "Those evil legislators are trying to
| steal the election. We need to defend our liberty."
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Hey loved followers: "Now our good guy is in, go back to
| sleep while we expand the Empire and kill thousands of
| people abroad you dont care about."
| swirepe wrote:
| Hey loved followers: "you see that yemeni kid over there?
| He was talking shit about you."
| ogre_codes wrote:
| > If Milgram's experimental method were discredited or
| debunked, should we conclude that
|
| If his methods are discredited, you can't really conclude
| anything from it. The fact that he didn't prove one thing
| doesn't by default prove the opposite, it just means he didn't
| prove the original thing.
| watwut wrote:
| > If Milgram's experimental method were discredited or
| debunked, should we conclude that, in fact, the findings were
| that the average person will revolt against an unjust
| authority, and therefore we should interpret a lack of
| pervasive popular revolt as a sign of justness and legitimacy
| of the authorities?
|
| No. Milgram's experiment being discredited means that we should
| revert back to the "we don't know what average person does".
|
| If you want to conclude that "the average person will revolt
| against an unjust authority" you will need to make multiple
| valid experiments to confirm that first. And you should not
| forget that peoples behavior is strongly influenced by cultures
| they are in, so you will also need to account for that.
|
| > therefore we should interpret a lack of pervasive popular
| revolt as a sign of justness and legitimacy of the authorities
|
| Slavery used to be considered just and legitimate. Slavery is
| not considered just and legitimate. "justness and legitimacy"
| are not scientific terms.
| arbitrage wrote:
| without any mention of the issues regarding the inability of
| anyone to reproduce the Milgram experiments and get the same
| results with any consistency, the whole example of "Obedience to
| Authority" as it relates to this sanctioned abuse of power should
| be thrown out.
|
| there isn't much left to learn from the milgram saga, other than
| that the consumer public absolutely loves pop-culture science.
| jakubp wrote:
| You are wrong about inability to reproduce. At least one recent
| replication was done in Poland (2015) by a respected academic
| team incl. professor Dolinski. The main result was consistent
| with what Milgram observed: most people did what they were
| told.
|
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170314081558.h...
| hntrader wrote:
| I wonder the impact of how widespread the knowledge of the
| original Milgram experiments is. If the subjects figure that
| the pain is fake because they've heard about this experiment
| before they might be more willing to administer the shock.
| davetannenbaum wrote:
| My understanding is that there have also been semi-recent
| replications done in France, Iran, and a partial replication
| conducted at Santa Clara university. All found the same basic
| pattern as the original study.
| jbullock35 wrote:
| Yes. There have been dozens of replication efforts -- none
| of them exact replications. The closest and most careful
| one that I know about is the one done by Jerry Burger at
| Santa Clara University: "Replicating Milgram: Would People
| Still Obey Today?" It's at
| https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-64-1-1.pdf.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I've heard that these kind of experiments are impossible to do
| today, due to "ethics" rules in science.
|
| Those rules are of course another example of obeying
| authorities :)
| jbullock35 wrote:
| That's right. Universities' "institutional review boards"
| (IRBs) don't permit scholars to tell subjects that they are
| delivering very heavy shocks. Jerry Burger of Santa Clara
| University took this point up in his replication article
| (which was necessarily only a partial replication).
| jl2718 wrote:
| The unpublished puppy experiment:
| https://youtu.be/9xpsVlY3QQc?t=39m
|
| Edit: found paper link:
| https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1972-24881-001
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