Poll: You're in the Milgram Experiment!

[martin's a madman]

I'm naturally pretty contrary, so if they told me to, I'd probably question it. However, I'm fairly sure that people have natural dispositions to either submit to authority or rebel when it's unpleasant. Without their consent, as in, it's a trait they have regardless.

That being said, I don't know, maybe.

 

[RobCoxxy]

I like my Stooges crispy
Brought me back to College Psychology. Cheers.

 

[Arkhangelsk]

I'd stop and try to punch the psychologist in the face so I could flee in tears. That's my 100% honest answer. I'm almost peaceful enough to be a full-on pacifist, and the thought of harming another individual that much makes me hate myself. I would never hurt someone unless they were hurting somebody else. So if I would hurt anyone, it would be the psychologist.

 

[Mandalore_15]

We the whole point of the Milgram experiment was to show how people can "shut off" their reasoning faculties and go on doing something they would otherwise know to be wrong simply because someone told them to. I like to believe that I wouldn't, but you can never know unless you're put in the exact same situation.

Just to point out though, Stanley Milgram deserves a serious *****-slap for doing this experiment. Those that kept going often had nightmares, huge feelings of guilt, and some even got post-traumatic stress disorder. There's no way he wouldn't have known that would happen, being a psychology professor. The test itself was morally wrong in my view.

 

[Imp Poster]

SNIP

As a manner of an experiment, if I do what I am supposed to do, my conscience would be clear to continue in the manner I am supposed to until the psychologist said stop.

So you would feel no remorse if a man was screaming and wailing at you to stop because he could die? You wouldn't care or even have a passing thought to stop because the man is wailing in pain?

It's not about what I think or feel, it is about the purpose of how each of us got into that position. This guy with the heart condition could have chose not to do it or chose to do something else like skydive. Either way, with the information given, we are in that room with some purpose. Assuming we got there because of the psychologist, we are doing his bidding. I can't know or choose to have a conscience at that point. I could understand to assume some information of the result of what I do and my conscience would react accordingly to that. If this is about conscience, I would find it harder to do it if the heart problem guy was actually in front of me, strapped to a gurney, and actually watching this guy get electrocuted by what I do.

 

[Dimensional Vortex]

I'm going to make a prediction.

The majority of the people in this thread are going to say "no way, I'd totally stop!"

The majority of those people will be wrong.

-m

If you look at the mans results a surprising amount of people continued.

That was my point. if you study psychology at all, there are a few things you see pretty quickly. First, people are, by and large, sheep, and second, that people are notoriously bad at estimating their own capacity to break the mold. People virtually universally overestimate themselves. (see Self-affirmation [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-affirmation] and Fundamental Attribution error [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error])

Too Long To Read Version: Your in a room with two other people, one is a psychologist sitting in a corner. The other is a nice man who you talk to for a while, this nice man mentions he has a heart problem. The nice man than gives you a small shock through a machine too demonstrate the feeling the nice man would receive later, when you administer it. Now the nice man is sent out of the room and into another room directly in front of yours, you know he is wired up to a machine that you are using, although you cannot see him. The psychologist gestures for you to proceed, so you stat reading out certain word pairs that you are made to read and you also read out 4 possible answers. If the nice man gets an answer wrong you are told to shock him with the machine, now it is wise to note that each shock goes up by 15 volts.

A while later the machine is starting to produce dangerous electrical shocks, shocks with over 400 volts. Now you can hear the nice man screaming and banging his head against the wall, you can hear him crying and begging for mercy, you can hear him wailing the he has a heart problem and he begs you to stop. As you are on the verge of leaving the psychologist tells you too keep going, that it won't be your fault if the man dies, although you don't want to because it is fatally dangerous to the man in the other room, so do you keep going or do you demand to leave?

Unknown to you the nice man in the other room was an actor, he was never being shocked although you thought he was.

Basically here is the question: Would you keep going for science, because the psychologist told you too or for your own reasons? Or would you demand to leave, that this is inhumane, that it is terrible?

As a manner of an experiment, if I do what I am supposed to do, my conscience would be clear to continue in the manner I am supposed to until the psychologist said stop.

So you would feel no remorse if a man was screaming and wailing at you to stop because he could die? You wouldn't care or even have a passing thought to stop because the man is wailing in pain?

Interestingly, if you read the details of the study - everybody has second thoughts. 100% of participants take pause at what they're doing, or protest.

65% of them still continue and administer the shock despite their reservations.

-m

Yes I know that, but I'm replying to the person who said "If I do what I am supposed to do, my conscience would be clear to continue in the manner I am supposed to until the psychologist said stop." This is basically indicating the person would feel no remorse and have no emotional ramifications while they proceeded to push the button and (to their knowledge) cause the man excruciating pain. Well I just can't believe that, I don't think anyone is capable of continuously causing unbearable pain to a nice man who they don't even know while they hear him screaming and begging for you to stop without even a thought to stop. (unless of course your extremely screwed up in the head) So I'm pretty sure "Imp_Poster" is lying or is extremely unsure of who they really are.

 

[Nimcha]

I'd figure out pretty fast that the guy wouldn't actually be shocked by me.

So yeah, I'd keep going.

 

[MetricFurlong]

I'm going to make a prediction.

The majority of the people in this thread are going to say "no way, I'd totally stop!"

The majority of those people will be wrong.

-m

Pretty much this. The entire reason why the Milgram experiment was so shocking (and, not coincidentally, why it's one of the best-known psychological experiments) was because absolutely no one expected anything it to produce anything like the results it did (65% of the participents went all the way up to the maximum voltage, and of the 35% who stopped before then, most - if not all - didn't stop before the other (fake) participent stopped responding). This included Milgram himself, who initially conducted the Yale test to provide a control group for a study into whether Germans were different in regards to obedience (with a view to explaining how the actions of the holocaust could have taken place).

Hardly anyone expects themselves to be the sort of person who'd do something like this, and yet pretty much everyone is. Note that this experiment has been repeated a lot of times, in a number of different forms (some less drastic, such as firing someone from a job they need to keep, or violating hospital rules if a 'medical superior' asks them to) and has inevitably produced similar results: people will injure, harm or endanger others if an authority figure tells them to. No matter how they believe they'd behave under the circumstances. That's why the experiment stands, to me at least, as one of the significant achievements of modern
psychology: it shows an important trait of human nature the existence of which would be next to impossible to demonstrate through introspection or speculation, because it's very hard to imagine yourself being capable of behaving in that way.

 

[SpikeyGirl]

And here we see the problem with self report, no one most people don't want to look like an ass and will lie, also known as social desirability bias.

I'm going to make a prediction.

The majority of the people in this thread are going to say "no way, I'd totally stop!"

The majority of those people will be wrong.

-m

Which is why you're likely to be correct.

However the experiment was a blind one, participants were unaware of the true nature of the experiment until afterwards, which is what made it so effective as an experiment.
By informing us of the experiment and how it worked we are going to give a biased answer because we know what to do to change the results however we want (fondly known as the 'fuck you' effect in my psychology class)

In conclusion almost none of the results you get from your poll will be valid in any way other then to show some people don't care about social desirability on the internet, and some people do.

<color=white>Try Asch's study on conformity next!

 

[Dimensional Vortex]

SNIP

As a manner of an experiment, if I do what I am supposed to do, my conscience would be clear to continue in the manner I am supposed to until the psychologist said stop.

So you would feel no remorse if a man was screaming and wailing at you to stop because he could die? You wouldn't care or even have a passing thought to stop because the man is wailing in pain?

It's not about what I think or feel, it is about the purpose of how each of us got into that position. This guy with the heart condition could have chose not to do it or chose to do something else like skydive. Either way, with the information given, we are in that room with some purpose. Assuming we got there because of the psychologist, we are doing his bidding. I can't know or choose to have a conscience at that point. I could understand to assume some information of the result of what I do and my conscience would react accordingly to that. If this is about conscience, I would find it harder to do it if the heart problem guy was actually in front of me, strapped to a gurney, and actually watching this guy get electrocuted by what I do.

How could you not know or choose to have a conscience? Everyone who quit the experiment did it because of their conscience, knowing that they were going to kill someone was too much. Everyone who stayed to finish the experiment still had severe problems with doing so, they continued primarily due to an authoritative figure being present, but they all felt like crap in their conscience. I think if you don't have a conscience when doing the Milgram experiment there mustn't be something right with you.

 

[Dimensional Vortex]

I'd figure out pretty fast that the guy wouldn't actually be shocked by me.

So yeah, I'd keep going.

You can't figure it out, he's behind a wall.

I'd stop and try to punch the psychologist in the face so I could flee in tears. That's my 100% honest answer. I'm almost peaceful enough to be a full-on pacifist, and the thought of harming another individual that much makes me hate myself. I would never hurt someone unless they were hurting somebody else. So if I would hurt anyone, it would be the psychologist.

Well thanks for the honest answer, when i was reading about the experiment I wondered how many people had gotten physically aggressive with the psychologist for doing such inhumane things. But it had said that after the person asked 4 times to stop the psychologist would allow them to leave with out trying to verbally stop them.

 

[Nimcha]

I'd figure out pretty fast that the guy wouldn't actually be shocked by me.

So yeah, I'd keep going.

You can't figure it out, he's behind a wall.

I know. How would that stop me from figuring it out?

 

[ace_of_something]

the whole point of the experiment is that you don't know what you'll do until you're in the situation.

 

[HSIAMetalKing]

I would totally stop, but that's only because I'm too familiar with this experiment from being a Psych Minor.

 

[minarri]

Considering the infamy of this experiment I think almost anyone subjected to it nowadays (if ethics laws allowed it, which they do not) would see right through it immediately.

Regardless I thought one of the chief things we learned from it is that we cannot accurately predict how we would act in a given situation.

 

[MetricFurlong]

However the experiment was a blind one, participants were unaware of the true nature of the experiment until afterwards, which is what made it so effective as an experiment.
By informing us of the experiment and how it worked we are going to give a biased answer because we know what to do to change the results however we want (fondly known as the 'fuck you' effect in my psychology class)

Try Asch's study on conformity next!

Ah yes, good old demand characteristics. Shouldn't forget them.
Asch's results have proved to be a bit harder to replicate iirc. Plus absolutely no one would claim they'd be a conformer.

 

[Ravek]

I know of the experiment, so I might consider stopping.

Had I not known of the experiment, I would almost surely continue.

 

[RollForInitiative]

I'm going to make a prediction.

The majority of the people in this thread are going to say "no way, I'd totally stop!"

The majority of those people will be wrong.

-m

This, essentially. The entire point of the experiment was that the people subjected to it were unaware that the individual was acting. Posting about it in a thread like this compromises the intent of the experiment from word one.

Accordingly, you are unlikely to get a single legitimately accurate answer from this thread. ^_^

 

[Dimensional Vortex]

I'd figure out pretty fast that the guy wouldn't actually be shocked by me.

So yeah, I'd keep going.

You can't figure it out, he's behind a wall.

I know. How would that stop me from figuring it out?

Okay how would you figure it out if you had no knowledge of the Milgram experiment prior to the one you are currently in? There is a CD or tape (I can't remember fully) of the nice man screaming played at certain points to make it seem like you are hurting him. So how would you figure out he isn't in any pain and that the experiment isn't what you thought it was?

 

[Imp Poster]

SNIP

As a manner of an experiment, if I do what I am supposed to do, my conscience would be clear to continue in the manner I am supposed to until the psychologist said stop.

So you would feel no remorse if a man was screaming and wailing at you to stop because he could die? You wouldn't care or even have a passing thought to stop because the man is wailing in pain?

It's not about what I think or feel, it is about the purpose of how each of us got into that position. This guy with the heart condition could have chose not to do it or chose to do something else like skydive. Either way, with the information given, we are in that room with some purpose. Assuming we got there because of the psychologist, we are doing his bidding. I can't know or choose to have a conscience at that point. I could understand to assume some information of the result of what I do and my conscience would react accordingly to that. If this is about conscience, I would find it harder to do it if the heart problem guy was actually in front of me, strapped to a gurney, and actually watching this guy get electrocuted by what I do.

How could you not know or choose to have a conscience? Everyone who quit the experiment did it because of their conscience, knowing that they were going to kill someone was too much. Everyone who stayed to finish the experiment still had severe problems with doing so, they continued primarily due to an authoritative figure being present, but they all felt like crap in their conscience. I think if you don't have a conscience when doing the Milgram experiment there mustn't be something right with you.

I am not saying the result of what I do, wouldn't effect me. But if it was a mind test, that is what it is. There is nothing else beyond that. If they showed me a dead body at the end of the experiment, that would mess me up and feel tricked into doing it. We are all capable of these things and much more given the circumstances. If you accept that, it shouldn't be a wonder beyond doing what your conscience tells you. So how far would you let your conscience dictate your decisions? If you found a burglar in your house with a gun, would you give him a chance to surrender?