Ms Mash is going to school and her Psyc class had her do a paper on the Milgram Experiment. I remember hearing about this when I was yonger but never really looked into it. The
French revived the experiment to see if the results could be reproduced.
For those not familiar with the
Milgram experiment it showed that an authority figure could convince a person to do something that they normally would not do. The experiment centered around a 'teacher' and a 'student'. The teachers were chosen at random and brought into a room. They were asking questions of a student (student was an actor). Each wrong answer was rewarded with increasing electrical shocks. The student was instructed to resist and complain the higher the shocks till the shocks were high enough and he was stop responding. The results were disturbing. 60% of the teachers went up the full voltage of 450V. They 'killed' the student.
The results in the game show were nearly identical.
I know it is difficult to know what you would do in a situation but I hope that I would not be willing to physically hurt or kill someone because someone told me to do it especially in an environment as described in the studies.
Very disturbing. It puts Nazi Germany, Stallins Russia ... etc in a different light.