The ideas in this article are very true and the dangers are real, but I am very puzzled about how everyone, especially the psychology profession, treats the Milgram experiment as proof of anything. This experiment seems to me to be a perfect example of how unreal psychological research really is. After all, the subjects did know that they were in an experiment, and although they were deceived about the details, they certainly knew that they were in the office of Professor Milgram, who presumably wasn't going anywhere. They also knew that assault and murder were crimes in the U.S. (and in every civilized country) and that being a scientific researcher provided no exemption from such laws. Isn't it almost obvious that the subjects knew, at least subconsciously, that there was something fake about the whole thing? I would be very interested to know what the reactions of the subjects were when they found out the truth. How many of them said, "That's just what I suspected!"? (And how many were ready to kill Milgram or at least sue him?)
If someone wanted to carry out this experiment for real, they would need to kidnap the subjects and drive them to an undisclosed basement location with no windows, tie them up and then start giving them orders to kill people that they saw right in front of them. Of course, this would involve many felonies, but that is the whole point. Setting up an artificial situation (which the subjects know, at least in the back of their minds, to be artificial) proves nothing at all about human nature.
I'm afraid that almost all psychological experimentation can be put on a continuum from the totally irrelevant (where the subjects are aware of everything that is going on) to the totally unethical (where they are being manipulated in a criminal fashion.) How anyone can take such stuff seriously is beyond my comprehension.
Cool
The ideas in this article are very true and the dangers are real, but I am very puzzled about how everyone, especially the psychology profession, treats the Milgram experiment as proof of anything. This experiment seems to me to be a perfect example of how unreal psychological research really is. After all, the subjects did know that they were in an experiment, and although they were deceived about the details, they certainly knew that they were in the office of Professor Milgram, who presumably wasn't going anywhere. They also knew that assault and murder were crimes in the U.S. (and in every civilized country) and that being a scientific researcher provided no exemption from such laws. Isn't it almost obvious that the subjects knew, at least subconsciously, that there was something fake about the whole thing? I would be very interested to know what the reactions of the subjects were when they found out the truth. How many of them said, "That's just what I suspected!"? (And how many were ready to kill Milgram or at least sue him?)
If someone wanted to carry out this experiment for real, they would need to kidnap the subjects and drive them to an undisclosed basement location with no windows, tie them up and then start giving them orders to kill people that they saw right in front of them. Of course, this would involve many felonies, but that is the whole point. Setting up an artificial situation (which the subjects know, at least in the back of their minds, to be artificial) proves nothing at all about human nature.
I'm afraid that almost all psychological experimentation can be put on a continuum from the totally irrelevant (where the subjects are aware of everything that is going on) to the totally unethical (where they are being manipulated in a criminal fashion.) How anyone can take such stuff seriously is beyond my comprehension.