Milgram's experiment

[Phuquit]

I first read about this years ago, and I immediately found it both interesting and disturbing.

I won't go into great detail about the experiment itself, but here is the Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment).

Here is a brief summary:
Subjects were invited to participate in an experiment to test the effects of pain on memory and learning.
They were required to administer electric shocks to human guinnea pigs.
The shocks weren't real, but the subjects didn't know this.
The human guinnea pigs were actually student's from Milgram's class, and they were faking the pain response.
The actual test subjects were the ones giving the shocks, and the experiment was designed to see how much pain they were prepared to inflict upon another human being simply because an authority figure told them to do so.

As I mentioned at the top, the results are disturbing...

[Beli]

that is really scary that so many people would knowingly inflict pain on others. although, i would wonder why the person getting "shocked" wouldn't just get up and leave. so maybe the ones doing the shocking felt justified in the fact that the other person could leave at any time.
people come up with the weridest things to experiment about!

[Napoleoniv]

Milgram's experiment was spooky, but did anyone click on the link in the article for that guy that pretended to be a cop on the phone (Stewart was his name I belive). Serously, how fucking stupid do you have to be to listen to some ass on the phone saying he's a cop. Nothing he told them to do was even remotly legal. Honestly, I think my faith in humanity just completley ran out. I knew most people are dumb little sheep, but sweet merciful buddha, I thought the human race was collectivley above the mentaly retarded line. "Oh, I fingered a 15 year old because some cop on the phone told me to." "I took off all my clothes for my manager 'cuz she said a cop told me to."? Would someone please tell me the thought process which makes this notion acceptable? Because I'm at a lose for explanations. Maybe it's because I naturally mistrust all authority, and assume most authority figures are morons who are to be ignored as much as possible, but didn't someone at least think to demand a uniformed officer with a search warrant or an arresst warrant show up and take her to the station? Since when is a McDonald's manager qualified to perform strip searches, anyway? And in what universe are oral sex and sodomy part of standard police procedure? Doesn't anyone know what their rights are? Unless they serve you with an arrest warrant, you can decline any and all searches, especially ones PERFORMED BY PEOPLE WHO AREN'T COPS. Hell, even if your under arrest, any defense lawyer, even a public defender, wouldn't let this kind of shit happen. Sometimes, I really just want to hit people in the head really hard, just to see if I hear an echo coming from their skulls.

And what kind of jackass does those searches? Weren't getting their jollies off? My ass they weren't. Any half-way intellegent, reasonable person should be able to puzzle out that this shit isn't right. Doesn't anyone take a fucking civics course in high-school anymore? Hell, with the experiment, at least someone could reason "well, they probably have doctors and shit around here in case something goes wrong. They are scientists at a major univeristy after all. They're prepared for this shit". I mean, even then it's wrong, but at least I can see where the people in Milgram's experiment decided to continue. It's still disturbing, but this shit with the phone hoax, that's just fucking wrong, and I do not understand the reasoning at all. Don't people know that cops are trained to try and ignore your rights, then tell you they didn't? It's part of the job. Dammit people, a little bit of paranoia and mistrust regarding authority is a good thing. It keeps you from raping employess when fake cops call.

Sorry if that seemed rant-like, but really, sometimes I just don't know about people anymore.

[steff]

Why disturbing? They know they won't be allowed to do it until the person dies. It would be stopped before then. And if people sign up for it then they should accept the consequences anyway. I have no sympathy for those drug testers either that ended up seriously bad. The risks were their, they were guinea pigs and better tested on idiots than innocent and unwilling animals.

[Phuquit]

Why disturbing?
I believe that the dial had a clearly marked red "Danger" area, which many test subjects didn't seem to mind at all (not mentioned in the article, but recalled from memory).

Another experiment - with wider-reaching consequences - inspired by Milgram's results, went something like this:
This time the venue was a hospital.
Actors posing as doctors (and hence, unknown to the test subjects) gave instructions to a number of nurses of varying years of experience.
The nurses were instructed to administer an injection to patients who were reasonably healthy.
The supplies of the drug in question had been replaced with harmless placebos. However, the bottles were clearly marked to indicate that a dosage above "x" cc is lethal. The dosages the nurses had been told to administer was many times higher than the stated lethal dose.
The results were in the region of 50-60% of trained nurses went ahead and "killed" otherwise healthy patients on the instructions of phoney doctors, without so much as raising an eyebrow.

As soon as I can remember the name of the experiment I will link to a more detailed analysis.

[Q80Thug]

here is Milgram's experiment demonstrated by darren brown

darren brown - the heist (watch from time: 20:30) (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2272327115482460278&q=Derren+Brown&hl=en)

you can watch the whole show if you want, but its somewhat off topic

[Uganja]

I studied this in psychology.... arent i clever :smartass:

[Psychostyle]

yeah so did i. i wasnt surprised by the results.