Milgram experiment

[AlP]

Details of the experiment are here. See also this youtube video from 2:30 (the whole series is excellent).

Briefly, the experiment is for an authority figure to tell a subject to administer electric shocks to another person who, unknown to the subject, is only pretending to receive the electric shocks. In some versions of the experiment, the actor pretending to receive shocks claims to have a heart condition. The finding of the experiment was that 65% of the population, whether male or female, were willing to deliver the maximum electric shock of "450 volts" with the actor pretending to be in extreme discomfort or unconscious, having previously banged on a wall asking the subject to stop delivering the shocks.

This is awful. 65%! That's most of us. How does one protect oneself from being so influenced by an authority figure as to do something that would ordinarily be something we absolutely would not do? Is simply knowing that one can be influenced in such a way sufficient to defend against it? I think it would be interesting to conduct such an experiment on people already familiar with the Milgram experiment but different enough that it couldn't be easily identified as such. Do any of the people here familiar with psychology know of such an experiment?

[Will]

Being aware of the experiment makes one less likely to fall into the behavior. Back when I was in school, we simulated the experiment and found about the same amount of people were willing to make very irresponsible decisions because of the directive from authority. The prof tested it again at the end of the year without us knowing it, and the result was closer to 15%. Simply the awareness of the tendency actually gave us a healthy skepticism of authority which overrode our baser tendency to follow.

[AlP]

Being aware of the experiment makes one less likely to fall into the behavior. Back when I was in school, we simulated the experiment and found about the same amount of people were willing to make very irresponsible decisions because of the directive from authority. The prof tested it again at the end of the year without us knowing it, and the result was closer to 15%. Simply the awareness of the tendency actually gave us a healthy skepticism of authority which overrode our baser tendency to follow.

Thanks Will. How did the prof go about testing it the second time?

[LoneMateria]

Supposedly hypnotists use that authority to "put people under the spell".  Most people play along.  Thats very interesting that 65% of people will obey an authority figure.  Maybe it was all in the pitch

[Will]

Thanks Will. How did the prof go about testing it the second time?

It was basically a less obvious incarnation of the Milgram, wherein students were assigned military roles which indirectly dealt with authority. It was quite clever, really. She explained to us that it was a study of the social organization of the modern military, and hidden among several experiments was one dealing with the issue of torture. This was back in late 2003, right before the Abu Ghraib photos were realized, actually. Anyway, the instances of torture were substantially lower than the instances of electrocution had been.

It wasn't perfectly scientific, but it did demonstrate to the class the most effective way to help avoid the problem of authority vs. conscience.

[Big Mac]

What's really scary is half the people I knew in the military feel no problem with killing/torturing people if ordered to do so. A lot thought it was getting even for 9/11. We live in a very scary society where the idea of getting revenge outweighs basic human compassion.

I'd be hard pressed to want to do that but then again, in the experiment setting I don't know how I'd react exactly if I had never heard of this experiment.