| | It was a good program. A take-away message was that the Milgram experiments -- where subjects were told to shock others --actually proved something contrary to popular opinion: When push comes to shove, people defy authority (as evidenced by reactions of the participants to the "4th prod" used in the study). The 4th prod, used only when the first 3 failed, was something like:
You have no other choice but to continue When the experimenter encountered someone unwilling to give the (fake) shock to others, he would ultimately tell them they have no other choice. That phrase can be interpreted as an indirect order -- and people are not willing to take indirect orders (let alone direct ones). The other interesting part is, if people won't hurt others simply because of a looming authoritarian threat, then how do you trick them into hurting others? The answer is given in the program and I do not want to spoil it for you, but by all means comment, if you feel you already have a good answer (before listening).
Ed
Further
Sample audio clips of the actual 1963 experiment:
http://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html
Kendra Cherry's take on the matter:
http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.htm
Later experiments conducted by Milgram indicated that the presence of rebellious peers dramatically reduced obedience levels. When other people refused to go along with the experimenters orders, 36 out of 40 participants refused to deliver the maximum shocks.
"Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority" (Milgram, 1974).
Pictures of actual documentation/apparatus utilized in the experiments:
http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/milgram_obedience_experiment.html
Where the "teacher" had to physically place the "learner's" hand on a "shock plate" in order to give him shocks above 150 volts the percentage of subjects who were prepared to administer the maximum voltage dropped to 30.0% and where the "experimenter" was at end of a phone line rather than being in the same room the percentage of subjects who were prepared to administer 450 volts dropped to 20.5% and where the "teacher" could himself nominate the shock level the percentage of subjects who were prepared to continue to the end of the scale dropped to 2.5%
Tabulated results of original experiment:
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~apkokot/results.htm
Bi-lingual transcript of Himmler speech mentioned in the program -- where Himmler said he realizes it is not good to hurt others, but that the SS troops needed to try to understand themselves or their actions as if they are acting for a noble, statist-collectivist cause which supposedly transcends the inherent, life-affirming humanity of individualism):
http://www.holocaust-history.org/himmler-poznan/speech-text.shtml
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 8/10, 8:40pm)
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