EPTThe Milgram Experiment
Over half a century ago, the world was witness to one of the most powerful and brutal army ever seen. It started with a young German named Hitler, and ended with the extermination of 11 million Jewish, Roman, polish, and physically/socially abnormal people were exterminated. The areas in which a lot of the murders were perpetrated were known as concentration camps.
The common idea could have been that the German people who acted as guard and executioner in those camps were monsters, with no remorse for their actions. Yet a man by the name of Stanley Milgram sought to understand the context in which, possibly, good people can do bad things.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2PGnHHnRMk&feature=related
In 1962, Stanley Milgram designed a study which included forty participants, one researcher, and one actor. The idea proposed to the participants was to understand the effect of negative reinforcement on performance (memory). One participant was able to meet another (actor) waiting for the experimenter to explain the study to them. The choice of placement for either of the participants was learner or teacher. In a faux choosing process, the actor was given placement as the learner. The result was to be hooked up to an device that would receive electric shocks, should the learner get answer wrong.
The teacher (the participants that were actually being studied) was given the task of administering electric shocks of increasing strength to the learner for every wrong answer. At a certain point the learner (actor) states his discomfort and his reluctance to finish the test. Further on he exclaims that he wants out of the test immediately, complaining of his heart condition. If the teacher shocks further, the learner no longer responds. Throughout the entirety of the study, the researcher (who sits in the room with the teacher) insists that the experiment continue on.
+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/0PoVu.png)
+ Show Spoiler +
The experimenter (E) orders the teacher (T), the subject of the experiment, to give what the latter believes are painful electric shocks to a learner (L), who is actually an actor and confederate. The subject believes that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual electric shocks, though in reality there were no such punishments. Being separated from the subject, the confederate set up a tape recorder integrated with the electro-shock generator, which played pre-recorded sounds for each shock level.
+ Show Spoiler +
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzYAdGl_0mA&feature=related
The question asked is how long the teachers would continue shocking even with the known distress of the learner. The answer, at least for this specific variation of the study, is a ~65% of the teachers. 26 out of 40 people, a majority, would do deliberate harm to a person knowing that person's distress if commanded by someone with perceived power.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSiMM_GIiyA&feature=related
So in special situations, people can do bad things. While there may have been people involved in those prison camps that did enjoy committing harsh acts to other humans, there may have been far more that simply did so because of fear or diffusion of responsibility.
Note: Milgram was very thorough and as a result there are many variations of which were studied and are touched upon in the third video.
+ Show Spoiler +
+ Show Spoiler +
BBC: The experiment done in 2009.
