Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 16:10:51 -0400
From: Kafka Dreams
To: void
Subject: experimentation on the human animal


Lots of people have heard of Stanley Milgram's 1963 "Behavioral Study
of Obedience" in which he described his obedience research conducted
in 1961-1962, although many might be hard-pressed to recite actual
details.

If nothing else, people have heard the Peter Gabriel song "milgram's
37 (We Do What We're Told)" which refers to the experiment.

Milgram found that 65% of his subjects (ordinary residents of New
Haven, CT) were willing to give apparently harmful electric shocks of
up to 450 volts to a protesting victim because an authority figure
told them to.  The frame of the experiment was that the "victim" was
answering questions and received the shocks for wrong answers or,
later, no answer.  In fact, the "wrong" answers were predetermined and
the "victims" were actors, pretending to receive shocks.

I was a psychology undergrad in the late 1980's to the early 1990's
and found the experiments disturbing, but remote.  Most of the
participants had been raised during the Great Depression or World War
II, times that I felt (in my youthful, naive way) were conducive to
conformity.  It wouldn't happen now.

And in a way it couldn't because various current codes of ethics
would undoubedly prevent it.  But if it were allowed, whether today's
average population would have the same results would be a hotly
contested topic.

(More info here - http://www.standleymilgram.com/index.htm)

The study that bothered me MUCH more was Stanford Professor Philip
G. Zimbardo's Prison Experiment.  Maybe because although it was
conducted only ten years later (in 1971) that put it in my lifetime
(albeit barely)... or maybe because it involved college students (like
me at the time) - either way, I found it very disquieting.

The frame of the experiment was that a group of students who
volunteered (for $15/day) to do a prison experiment were divided into
two sets - prisoners and guards (the guards were split into three
subsets to cover the three shifts).  Those designated as prisoners
were arrested by the actual police, kept in cells at the police
station, and then transferred to a prison constructed by the
experimentors in the basement of one of the college buildings.

The experiment, scheduled to last two weeks, was terminated after six
days because of what it was doing to the students.  In only six days,
they began exhibiting behavior that could be found everywhere from
Nazi concentration camps to U.S. prisons at the time.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that it bugged me
because the effects were so pervasive.  Prisoners, guards, and even
the experimentors were impacted.

But I never really had more of an understanding of the experiment than
whatever was conveyed by a page or two in a text book and a few
minutes of class discussion.  It certainly made an imprint, for me to
remember it after all of these years, but still.

Turns out Prof. Zimbardo has a web page.  And he's set up a sort of
slide show that walks through the experiment, piece by piece.

It is deeply disturbing.

I could not bring myself to watch the video clips.

http://www.zimbardo.com/prison.htm