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What those shocked people (Ha) are often not told is that Milgram went to great lengths to appeal to people's altruism (desire to progress the state of science)
by JackCh 8y ago
What those shocked people (Ha) are often not told is that Milgram went to great lengths to appeal to people's altruism (desire to progress the state of science) when selecting subjects and to persuade them of the scientific validity of what they'd be asked to do. That once the experiments began the experimenter would frequently pressure the 'teacher' by invoking the necessity of science.
He was measuring "obedience to authority" insofar as "authority" meant trust in scientists credentialed by Yale. One variation on the experiment following the same script as the infamous variation tested obedience rates outside of the Yale campus and, of course, there was significantly less compliance.
Or put another way
>'according to academic Don Mixon, Milgram didn't measure immoral behavior in his lab. On the contrary, he argued that what Milgram measured was misplaced trust. [...] Don found the same results as Milgram but came to completely different conclusions. he argued that it wasn't immorality that drove Milgram's subjects to flip the switches but trust in the experimenter, who, despite the cries from the learner, calmly told them to continue and gave the impression that there was nothing to worry about. [...] According to Don, Milgram simply measured the faith that people put in experts: "He found just the opposite of what he thought he found; nothing about the subjects' behavior is evil. In fact, people go to great lengths, will suffer great distress, to be good. People got caught up in trying to be good and trusting the expert. [...] The only evil in the obedience research, Don came to believe, was "the unconscious evil of the experimenters"'
- romwell 8y agoPotato, potato in my opinion. Even more so, Don's perspective is even more shocking. The people doing something that (to their best knowledge) hurts the other person and hurts them (less so, but still) because their authority person told them its for the greater good? I'd take a sadist that thinks for themselves instead.
- JackCh 8y agoMilgram didn't persuade these people that science is good. He persuaded them that what they'd be asked to do was for science. In either case, it's far off from the "people follow orders" narrative. When teachers in the Milgram experiment were confronted with direct orders their compliance rates plummeted. They were compliant when they believed they were cooperating Milgram, and uncompliant when they believed they were being ordered by Milgram. During their periods of compliance they identified with Milgram by sharing the common goal of advancing science. The forth prod, the direct order ("You have no other choice, you must go on") caused any perception of a shared identity between the teacher and Milgram to evaporate and with it, their compliance. http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001426 http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jour...
- romwell 8y ago>Milgram didn't persuade these people that science is good. He persuaded them that what they'd be asked to do was for science. ..which is something a volunteer for a science test sees as a good thing. >In either case, it's far off from the "people follow orders" narrative. Indeed. I always took it along the lines of "when put in a setting where it's acceptable to harm others consequence-free, people need little to do so". This doesn't seem to contradict what you are saying.