ZOMG! a serious post
No, really (and a wee touch of quasi-leetspeak too).
So, its the last night for me in this fork-less hostel (another night of the pasta challenge) and I'm reading a psychology textbook. For some reason they have a whole bookcase of them and this one was lying around. (God, I was even brushing up on some Economics the other day).
Anyway; I have come across this experiment by a dude called Milgram, in 1974.
For those who are too lazy to read it I'll summarise: it showed an experiment where one person (an actor) is asked a series of questions, while another (the actual subject) is required to administer increasingly large electric shocks to the actor for incorrect answers. This is all staged so that the actor gives a number of incorrect answers, and pretends to receive the shock but actually doesn't.
The key issue is that about 65% of participants were prepared to give the actors shocks that they themselves believed were harmful and possibly fatal, simply because they were instructed to continue with the experiment by the people running it.
According to the textbook I read; a number of the participants (people giving out the shocks) were particularly shaken and 3 actually went into varying forms of shock.
I often get angry at the inabilty of people to think for themselves (and at myself when it applies to me - what a hypocrite) but this sort of shit is just ridiculous. Gah, maybe I would have done the same. Who knows.
Man, psychology has the best emperical examples, by the way. Especially the old school ones that are super-unethical.
So, its the last night for me in this fork-less hostel (another night of the pasta challenge) and I'm reading a psychology textbook. For some reason they have a whole bookcase of them and this one was lying around. (God, I was even brushing up on some Economics the other day).
Anyway; I have come across this experiment by a dude called Milgram, in 1974.
For those who are too lazy to read it I'll summarise: it showed an experiment where one person (an actor) is asked a series of questions, while another (the actual subject) is required to administer increasingly large electric shocks to the actor for incorrect answers. This is all staged so that the actor gives a number of incorrect answers, and pretends to receive the shock but actually doesn't.
The key issue is that about 65% of participants were prepared to give the actors shocks that they themselves believed were harmful and possibly fatal, simply because they were instructed to continue with the experiment by the people running it.
According to the textbook I read; a number of the participants (people giving out the shocks) were particularly shaken and 3 actually went into varying forms of shock.
I often get angry at the inabilty of people to think for themselves (and at myself when it applies to me - what a hypocrite) but this sort of shit is just ridiculous. Gah, maybe I would have done the same. Who knows.
Man, psychology has the best emperical examples, by the way. Especially the old school ones that are super-unethical.
posted by Skarnz at 12:31 pm
2 Comments:
I think my reaction to the experiment would be dependent on:
1. If the shockee was a volunteer or if they were part of the study group who was trained to recieve shocks. Or something weird.
2. How insistent the people were about me giving the shockee shocks. You know, like whether they were screaming at me to do so or not.
3. Finally, whether the researchers had told me for sure that the electric shocks were harmless (in the sense that they won't cause long term damage)
Pretty crazy experiment though!
i remember reading of an experiment whereby there were 2 monkeys - one had control of a lever that had to be pulled within a set time period, and if it didn't get switched they would both get an electric shock. this went on for a while until in the end the monkey in charge of pulling the lever died of stress, whereas the other monkey was fine.
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