[MUD-Dev] Milgram experiment (was Re: WIRED: Kilers have more fun)

[Mike Sellers]

At 01:23 PM 8/3/98 -0700, Adam Wiggins wrote:
>On Sat, 1 Aug 1998, Marian Griffith wrote:
>> On Tue 28 Jul, Koster, Raph wrote:
>> > (have you heard of the tests whereby they took a random group of
>> > perfectly nice people, and told them, "if you press that button, it
>> > gives an electric shock to a test subject in another room"? An actor
>> > screamed when the button was pressed; they all pressed it A LOT).
>>=20
>> I learned about that experiment. I also remember that most people who
>> pushed that button where distinctly unhappy about it  and needed some
>> authority figure to 'justify' their actions,  so the example does not
>> entirely apply.  The observation that people pushed that button  more
>> easily  if they could not see their victim  suggests that you are for
>> the most part right however.
>
>Anyone have a URL or something where one could read about this?  Sounds
>interesting.

In case no one else has posted this yet (I have lost all hope of keeping up
with the threads here), this experiment was conducted by Stanley Milgram in
the early 1960s I believe.  It's a classic in psych literature, and will be
in most any intro psychology book (certainly any on experimental psych).
It was an experiment conducted on people's response to authority, and
opened huge cans of worms about topics as diverse as the Holocaust and
experimental ethics.  Marian's recollection is correct -- the people
(unwittingly) taking part in the experiment were distressed but most
increased the voltage at the behest of the lab-coated authority figure,
even past the point when the person they thought they were shocking had
apparently gone unconscious or even died.  It's an experiment you could not
do today, and yet it asks a lot of unanswered questions about sides of
ourselves we'd often just as soon ignore. =20

A brief search on the net turned up this good link
<http://hobbes.itc.virginia.edu/~lpr5c/milgram.html> if you want more info.
 Another link on that page (<http://www.wardy.org/mihugo.html>) provides
more detail and analysis.  IMO, this sort of reading should be absolutely
required for anyone who wants to try to affect the behavior of those in
their world.  Both the perversity and the constancy of people is often
underestimated, it seems to me. =20

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