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Milgram's Obedience to Authority Experiment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzTuz0mNlwU

Thank you government funded education system, you've done such a great job at teaching children how to forget moral inhibitions as long as somebody else wears a "suit of honor" and dictates your actions for you...

I'm not sure your mistrust of government funded education is that well placed (at least in this particular case). I don't really know the details, to be honest, but I'm under the impression that these experiments were conducted in several different countries, all throughout the world, since it was first devised half a century ago, with consistent results - which I assume one wouldn't expect, for different societies, at different points in time, if the education system alone was to blame.

That isn't to say education doesn't play a part, of course; the teach to test and find a job, any job, attitude present in many countries is harmful enough in its own right (though a government funded education system doesn't necessarily have to follow that format), but other aspects of society can't be ignored, and may end up playing a larger role here (say, where most people spend the majority of their time: their jobs).

At any rate, whatever the reason behind it may be, the results are certainly scary.

I agree to a certain extent that it's not entirely the school systems fault, but school should be used as a tool to empower children, not to transform them into the next generation of willing subjects. They teach children not to protect themselves, or stand up for themselves and I don't think it's healthy... Schools aren't just missing the opportunity to empower our kids with knowledge and self-respect, they're actively opposing the concept by practicing such an imbalanced authoritarian political structure...

This test should also be performed in an undeveloped society to see if the results differ. Maybe this is a result of the "domestication" of people (the predisposition of civilized societies towards subjugation or dereliction of individual responsibility), or if it's simply an artifact of an ancient human nature, the remains of a tribal "pack mentality" creating a hierarchy...

Either way, this is correctable behavior... How far would you progress in this experiment? I know how far I would go, and it's only to the part when the volunteer says, "stop"...

I'm going to point out that I heard about these tests in school, probably around the time we talked about the Nazis and the concentration camps. I don't know if they still teach it in schools though.

What year did you graduate high school? I assume it was before standardized testing, am I correct? Any children in public schools?

There's no room in the mandatory curriculum to teach kids about the flaws in humanity which have led to the losses of hundreds of millions of innocent lives... As long as the kids know what year an event started and ended, and who the "bad guy" was, they can check it off the list and briefly talk about the next subject on the list...

I graduated in '99. That could be true. I know someone with a child in public school, and have heard about the teachers hating that they can't teach what they want to because of the tests they have to always study for, there's just no time for that. They also keep the children busy, without them actually learning too much, so they won't go study on their own either. :(

The Milgram experiment, with its chilling results, occurred in the early '60's. Have things changed since the Milgram experiment? Are people less obedient to unjust authority? Many people imagine so. I have two words in answer to that question: Abu Ghraib. But perhaps, some might think to themselves: "That was a military situation where soldiers are told to obey authority. What does that tell us about real life?" "The Human Behavior Experiments," a program aired a number of years ago on TV, provides an answer (PSO, 2006). Besides discussing the Milgram and Zimbardo experiments, as well as the Latane and Darley studies on bystander apathy, the program details a number of notorious real-life cases and draws the connections to the psychology studies. Perhaps the most astonishing one was the case of the "Telephone Cop." A man, masquerading as a police officer, started calling fast food places around the country, telling the manager that one of the employees was a suspected drug dealer and asking the manager to hold the suspect for him. In the example used for the program, the innocent teenage girl employee was, over several hours, subjected to humiliating questions, a strip search and finally--sexual molestation by the manager's fiance! This, all at the behest of the alleged police officer on the phone. Hard to believe? Sorry but similar results at other fast food places happened more than once. The man on the phone sounded authoritative and had the mask of authority. They obeyed.

Lest readers still think such events are flukes, current psychology research evidence also supports the idea that people are still basically about as obedient to authority as they were in the 1960's. Never underestimate the capacity of individuals to compartmentalize their moral values from their everyday lives. A number of partial replications of the Milgram experiment have been conducted over the years. None are encouraging; almost all tend to support Milgram's basic conclusions, though with some inconsistencies. Several of the most important are described below.

http://www.rit.org/authority/futureobedience.php