Despite the controversies surrounding the Milgram and SPE experiments, it is indisputable that a high percentage of normal people will conform to committing atrocities under pressure
Stanley Milgram had shown that people would continue to shock someone who missed an answer to a question to deadly levels if ordered to by authority. And Philip Zimbardo showed in Stanford Prison Experiment that those designated position as guard would comply to commands to commit cruelties toward prisoners. However, there is some controversy surrounding their findings:
- Gina Perry had criticized Milgram’s experiments for fudged results and hiding that many participants had realized the subject was an actor
- Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment has been criticized for him being too involved
- Subjects within the Stanford Prison Experiment may have been particularly high in aggressiveness, authoritarianism, and social dominance and lower for empathy and altruism
- A replication study of the Stanford Prison experiment by the BBC, prisoners revolted and established power-sharing commune, for it to be later turned into a draconian regime
- Zimbardo criticized the BBC replication study of the SPE for its structure, random selection of guards and prisoners, and for filming it
Amid these controversies, two deeply vital things are indisputable: When pressured to conform and obey, a far higher percentage of perfectly normal people than most would predict succumb and do awful things. Contemporary work using a variant on the Milgram paradigm shows “just following orders” in action, where the pattern of neurobiological activation differs when the same act is carried out volitionally versus obediently.
References
- Sapolsky, Robert. (2017). Behave Chapter 12. Hierarchy, Obedience, and Resistance (p. 533). New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Psychology / Social Psychology Status:☀️