hUMANS DISPLAYING THEIR TENDENCY TO CRUELTY

 

  • Obedience to Authority. Stanley Milgram’s shock experiments are arguably the most famous in the history of psychology. 

  • Especially relevant is experiment five, where a participant had to give a test to an innocent person in another room, and turn up a dial with increasingly greater shocks for each wrong answer. 

  • At 270 volts, the test taker demanded to be released from the test and was making agonizing screams. 

  • At higher levels the pleas became desperate and hysterical. Nevertheless, under pressure from an authority figure, 80% of participants went at least to 270 volts, and 65% went all the way to the 450 volt XXX level, which was a lethal level of shock (so they thought) (Milgram 1974: 60).

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