The Human Disposition to Obey & Conform
I was reading an article in the SMH about Stanley Milgram’s infamous obedience to authority experiment and I remember studying this when working on my thesis last year. The findings of these experiments are quite disturbing.
Using a fake `memory experiment' scenario, Milgram sets up a situation where participants were asked to administer shocks of (they believed) lethal voltage to other members of the public. The majority (approx. 66%) complied with the experimenter's orders. These experiments demonstrate with jarring clarity that ordinary individuals could be induced to act destructively even in the absence of physical coercion, and humans need not be innately evil or aberrant to act in ways that are reprehensible. (NB. Milgram's work was inspired by an effort to understand the Holocaust)
Let’s use another example. Hartwell, a law professor, conducted an educational exercise for his students in which they were to individually advise litigants in a small-claims court. He told his students that he would be available in an adjacent office if they needed to consult with him. Hartwell writes:
Given the findings of these experiments, I want to pose the question: is it normal human psychology to let pressures to obey and/or to conform override our ethical principles? I’d like to think when faced with a moral dilemma, we will act as our conscience dictates but these experiments teach us that in a concrete situation with powerful social constraints, our moral sense can easily be trampled.
The fact that our moral sense can be easily trampled or that its actually hard for people to stay true to their own ethics worries me a great deal. I'm not talking just about times of war or conflict (as horrific as these examples are), I want to extend its applicability to everyday life as well.
Most intelligent people realise that prejudices are wrong, that harming another human being is wrong or bullying someone weaker should not be tolerated. But how often do people ignore slurs on the street, watch someone get their bag stolen & ignore it, or the children in our playgrounds ignoring the bullying of another child, in fear of being the next target?
Why are people like Ronald Ridenhour, the exception rather than the rule? (Ridenhour refused to even give the first shock when he did the Milgram experiment and later, became the whistleblower for the My Lai masscre, against all his friends' & family's wishes).There's something we can all learn from these experiments with regards to the kind of person that we are and the kind of person we can potentially be.
*gets off moral highground*
Using a fake `memory experiment' scenario, Milgram sets up a situation where participants were asked to administer shocks of (they believed) lethal voltage to other members of the public. The majority (approx. 66%) complied with the experimenter's orders. These experiments demonstrate with jarring clarity that ordinary individuals could be induced to act destructively even in the absence of physical coercion, and humans need not be innately evil or aberrant to act in ways that are reprehensible. (NB. Milgram's work was inspired by an effort to understand the Holocaust)
Let’s use another example. Hartwell, a law professor, conducted an educational exercise for his students in which they were to individually advise litigants in a small-claims court. He told his students that he would be available in an adjacent office if they needed to consult with him. Hartwell writes:
The "clients" were, in fact, a single confederate who sought the same advice from each student. how she should present her side of a rent dispute. I told each student to advise the client to lie under oath that she had paid the rent. When students asked for clarification, I uniformly responded, "...My advice is that, if your client wants to win her case, then you must tell her to perjure herself."... We wanted them to experience the pull between loyalty to authority... and prescribed ethical conduct.... Although many of the 24 participating students grumbled either to me or to the client about my proffered advice, 23 told their client to perjure herself.
Given the findings of these experiments, I want to pose the question: is it normal human psychology to let pressures to obey and/or to conform override our ethical principles? I’d like to think when faced with a moral dilemma, we will act as our conscience dictates but these experiments teach us that in a concrete situation with powerful social constraints, our moral sense can easily be trampled.
The fact that our moral sense can be easily trampled or that its actually hard for people to stay true to their own ethics worries me a great deal. I'm not talking just about times of war or conflict (as horrific as these examples are), I want to extend its applicability to everyday life as well.
Most intelligent people realise that prejudices are wrong, that harming another human being is wrong or bullying someone weaker should not be tolerated. But how often do people ignore slurs on the street, watch someone get their bag stolen & ignore it, or the children in our playgrounds ignoring the bullying of another child, in fear of being the next target?
Why are people like Ronald Ridenhour, the exception rather than the rule? (Ridenhour refused to even give the first shock when he did the Milgram experiment and later, became the whistleblower for the My Lai masscre, against all his friends' & family's wishes).There's something we can all learn from these experiments with regards to the kind of person that we are and the kind of person we can potentially be.
*gets off moral highground*
posted by Food For Life at 6:30 PM
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