Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View

[Turtle]

...Good point about people being 'primed' to obey them though by the accouterments of authority - the lab coat, the setting etc. I imagine if you conducted this same experiment and the people DIDN'T have lab coats, etc, it wouldn't work nearly as well.

 

TFS

 

I'm not sure which of us made that point, but I'll run with it because it's on the way to my goal. To whit, I posit that the lab coat, the office, the glasses, etcetera are not merely accoutrements to authority, but that they constitute an authority themselves.

 

Many experiments have followed Milgram's model and varied the setting as you suggest, but the upshot of all is that when a tiny push comes to a gentle shove, unconcious and/or uncritical assumptions about what is a valid authority can override the strictest profession and/or belief in a 'high' moral code.

 

I also think that the unconcious participation of the brain is rooted in the proportional sizes and interconnectedness of key structures in the brain. As I learned from Craig in the mathemagical box thread, there may be more representations using fewer things with more connections than with more things having fewer connections.

 

The impetus for my speculations comes from the new technique of real-time imaging of peoples brains while they are subjected to select stimuli. Anyway, here's a bit more from that NY Times article.

 

The Subconcious Brain - Who's Minding the Mind? - New York Times

The brain appears to use the very same neural circuits to execute an unconscious act as it does a conscious one.

...

Scientists have spent years trying to pinpoint the exact neural regions that support conscious awareness, so far in vain. But there’s little doubt it involves the prefrontal cortex, the thin outer layer of brain tissue behind the forehead, and experiments like this one show that it can be one of the last neural areas to know when a decision is made.

 

This bottom-up order makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. The subcortical areas of the brain evolved first and would have had to help individuals fight, flee and scavenge well before conscious, distinctly human layers were added later in evolutionary history. In this sense, Dr. Bargh argues, unconscious goals can be seen as open-ended, adaptive agents acting on behalf of the broad, genetically encoded aims — automatic survival systems.

[WouterVos]

I think Stanly Milgram did a great experiment and service to humanity.

It has explained a number of things to me.

But I'm worried about developing tunnel vision.

1. Is anyone aware of any similar experiments to check these findings?

2. Or good refutations of the conclusions?

 

3. I've found and article from the independent:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/famous-milgram-electric-shocks-experiment-drew-wrong-conclusions-about-evil-say-psychologists-9712600.html

 

Where they claim that because the participants didn't feel guilty for what they did that they therefore believe what they where doing wasn't wrong.

But that's the whole point this experiment showed, that people believe it's not their actions but those of the authority, since he's responsible.

 

4. Another repeat was by Scientific American:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-milgrams-shock-experiments-really-mean/

 

But their setup was for a TV show, that has much less authority than a university like Yale and it means you're going to be revealed publicly as some sort of torturer.

A very different situation that provides no evidence against Milgram's conclusions.

 

5. Is it true that experiments like this have been banned?