Hi Everyone,
Thank-you to all who responded (most of you).
You all pointed out various salient ideas and questions raised: The idea of discussing obedience and actually putting it into action; the idea of creating an unethical scenario for the purpose of research (the people were never in any real danger, as the “receiver” of the “pain” was in on the experiment); the idea that if a so-called normal, unaggressive individual is put in charge, he or she might well take advantage of this authority; the idea that people will actually inflict harm if there is someone else who is “responsible” (the idea behind many atrocities in war? Think about this) and this also brings up the question, when should we be obedient and when should we not? Soldiers are told to simply follow orders, and that if they don’t, they could jeopardize their fellow soldiers. One of you brings up the Stanford Prison experiment, and yes, I want you to keep Milgram’s experiment in mind, when we look at the Stanford experiment later on (how much trust and authority do we give to people with access to weapons, such as the police and the military?). One of you raises the very interesting question as to why Milgram uses the Nazi situation rather than situations here in the US (the Korean war could have been referenced, or indeed, the civil rights movement) so I’d like you all to think about this.
We are gratified that this took place decades ago, but are we really so much more enlightened? Think about present day examples of blindly following orders, and bring an example (written up or a link you want us to see) to class this Wed., April 6th.