The Milgram Experiment

Anyone else remember this chestnut from Psych 101?

It involved testing the limits of obedience. Specifically, Dr. Milgram set up a situation in which volunteers were told that they were participating in an experiment measuring the effects of punishment on learning. They were asked to administer increasingly powerful electric shocks to the "subject" of the test (who was actually one of the researchers and was not actually shocked) whenever he got a wrong answer.

The "shocks" ran up to a potentially fatal 450 volts. Toward this stage, the "subject" would be screaming in pain, begging not to be shocked again, acting as though he had lost consciousness, etc.

The result?

Fully 65% of subjects went all the way to 450 volts. No subject bailed out before hitting 300 volts.

And who were these people? They were not in the military. They were not police or prison guards. They were Yale undergrads.

Subsequent experiments on other groups of people got the same results.

Here's more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

Here's an article by Milgram himself: http://home.swbell.net/revscat/perilsOfObedience.html

This makes some very interesting reading in light of the news of torture coming out of Iraq. It's hard to read Milgram's work without wondering what terrible things one would do under some circumstances.

http://www.unc.edu/~pmeyer/General_Publications/Hitler.pdf

Originaly published in Esquire 1970 - PFD format

But he quickly found being German had nothing to do with it...

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/relaged/970108prisonexp.html

This study plays directly into the torture at issue in Iraq (and???) today - the exp. was done in 1971!

Tommorrow, when I'm not so tired I am going to do some research into cultural and geographic differences regarding these reactions of the human psyche.

Freerepublic and a fooled Nation. We are one gigantic ship of fools.

the milgram study, stanford prison experiment, the thalidomide study, and the tuskegee syphillis study all led to the formation of institutional review boards on all universities in the united states and anywhere else that does research. the idea is to keep participants as far away from physical and psychological harm as possible. for example, people were shell shocked from the milgram study when they realized that they had the potential within them to shock someone to death just because someone in a lab coat told them too. and the thalidomide and tuskegee experiments are obvious examples of harmful studies.

an IRB it is, in effect, a group of compliance analysists and a review board that reviews every single piece of proposed research dealing with human subjects at the respective institution. all research on human subjects must adhere to a strict federal guideline.

so basically the days of those types of experiments are supposed to be over. just in case anyone was wondering if it was still going on.

I checked it out at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/006131983X/ref=cm_rev_all_1/104-4184535-8492729?v=glance&s=books&vi=customer-reviews

I ended up ordering it ("used": $7.00). You're right about it being a key to understanding what's going on in Iraq (or anywhere else, including here). I'm getting into this "prisoner abuse" topic on my union BBS, as well as a listserve. Thanks for the reminder; I'll cite that book in my next posting there.

I don't know what I'd do without DU as a source of information and insight. (And YES! ... Bob Boudelang).

pnorman