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Audio tapes reveal mass rule-breaking in Milgram's obedience experiments

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Re: Audio tapes reveal mass rule-breaking in Milgram's obedience experiments

#131

Post by raylad »

mikey_p wrote: post #72
crazygringo wrote: post #38

To be clear, this doesn't seem like it invalidates anything in the original experiment. The "rule-breaking" isn't referring to anything the researchers were doing. It's referring to what the participants were doing. It points out that the compliant subjects who delivered the shocks weren't always following the procedure they were given perfectly. Which is, of course, expected, since people in general don't follow ins…

The interesting bit is that the group the quit the experiment part way through (presumably over ethical objections) were consistently better at following the rules, which indicates that the rules may have actually been designed to prevent some of the problems that the obedient group experienced, which might prevent them from seeing the ethical or moral issues involved in the experiment. Now the interesting question i…

One explanation is that the ones who quit believed it was a real experiment and decided they wanted no part of it.

The ones who were "obedient" figured out it was fake and treated it as a game.

Re: Audio tapes reveal mass rule-breaking in Milgram's obedience experiments

#132

Post by Dylan16807 »

watwut wrote: post #114
r-w wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about " much more reserved"... Citation needed. In the absence of evidence otherwise I assume academics are just people.

Yes they are just people - people who are much close to the topic then random commenters on HN. Frankly, you made up accusation of academics from nothing and without bothering to check what they generally say. You just made it up

What accusation did r-w make...?

Re: Audio tapes reveal mass rule-breaking in Milgram's obedience experiments

#134

Post by rdiddly »

crazygringo wrote: post #38

To be clear, this doesn't seem like it invalidates anything in the original experiment. The "rule-breaking" isn't referring to anything the researchers were doing. It's referring to what the participants were doing. It points out that the compliant subjects who delivered the shocks weren't always following the procedure they were given perfectly. Which is, of course, expected, since people in general don't follow ins…

Another interpretation exists too: maybe obedience and compassion were orthogonal. They reported an increase in the error rate in parallel with the increase in voltage, right? Maybe those who continued into the more dangerous voltage ranges, committed more errors because they felt flustered. So in direct contradiction to the image of their being driven into some kind of hateful bloodlust, perhaps they felt more compassion and distress as the experiment proceeded. But just didn't act on it.

Re: Audio tapes reveal mass rule-breaking in Milgram's obedience experiments

#135

Post by Aeolun »

goatlover wrote: post #45
crazygringo wrote: post #38

To be clear, this doesn't seem like it invalidates anything in the original experiment. The "rule-breaking" isn't referring to anything the researchers were doing. It's referring to what the participants were doing. It points out that the compliant subjects who delivered the shocks weren't always following the procedure they were given perfectly. Which is, of course, expected, since people in general don't follow ins…

It wasn't a properly controlled experiment to begin with, nor was it repeated. General conclusions should not be drawn from a single, flawed study. But it makes for good headlines and talking points.

Are you saying we should repeat it? For science!

Re: Audio tapes reveal mass rule-breaking in Milgram's obedience experiments

#136

Post by sarchertech »

raylad wrote: post #129

One question is whether the participants really believed they were giving shocks to the "learners". In college I participated in a number of psychological studies that were similarly deceptive, where one of the other participants was obviously (to me) an actor, or, sometimes, a pre-recorded video. At least one of the studies I participated in was quite like the Milgram study described in the article, where I was supp…

Gina Perry combed through all the available evidence and interviewed some of the participants and came to the conclusion that fewer than half believed it was real.

Re: Audio tapes reveal mass rule-breaking in Milgram's obedience experiments

#137

Post by sarchertech »

jdawg777 wrote: post #96

It raises the point that if the results are questionable, why not just repeat the experiment? Here is Derren Brown's attempt at repeating the experiment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxq4QtK3j0Y

The he actual experiment would never make it through IRB and even if it did it’s impossible to filter out the people who spot a fake.

Re: Audio tapes reveal mass rule-breaking in Milgram's obedience experiments

#138

Post by xg15 »

raylad wrote: post #129

One question is whether the participants really believed they were giving shocks to the "learners". In college I participated in a number of psychological studies that were similarly deceptive, where one of the other participants was obviously (to me) an actor, or, sometimes, a pre-recorded video. At least one of the studies I participated in was quite like the Milgram study described in the article, where I was supp…

Yeah, this is an important point. If the main motivation of the subjects would have been to "play along" correctly, then this could also explain the behavior regarding the shocks and "rule breaking". It could also have diminished their empathy for the "students" even more if they realized those were actors anyway.

Re: Audio tapes reveal mass rule-breaking in Milgram's obedience experiments

#139

Post by kakacik »

wredcoll wrote: post #76
kakacik wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first point, and I can see in my own life, is valid. Not properly rich by any means, but vastly surpassed any expectations and most of my peers from earlier life (which is rather easy when coming from poor eastern Europe but somehow most folks from back home didn't, too deep in their little comfort zones or fears of risks that were mostly made up). It can be reframed as cca discipline too, willingness to suffer a…

The great thing is you can just focus on the one person who "worked hard" or "self disciplined" or "studied well" and got rich while ignoring all the other people who did the same thing and didn't.

Working blindly hard is rarely rewarded well. Working smart, much better success story. This can be applied across whole job market but also within white collar jobs - I saw folks around me almost burn out with little to no reward, when it was cca clear it would end up that way. I didn't at that point, and leaned into stuff in other areas of my life and that worked much better.

I only write about myself and my perspective, have nothing to sell here, just sharing experience. No need to be so dismissive. There is always a factor of luck, but much less so if that approach spans across decades and generally works for me.

Re: Audio tapes reveal mass rule-breaking in Milgram's obedience experiments

#140

Post by acjohnson55 »

pixl97 wrote: post #121
naravara wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah one of the take-away interpretations I’ve always heard of it is the implication that the deferral to an authority figure led people to conscientiously proceed with administering fatal shocks. But this additional detail suggests that conscientiousness is actually negatively correlated with following through to the point of ethical compromise and it is, in fact, the less conscientious people who were rushing to ju…

>And subjects who are just trying to follow the tasks as given to them are sort of washing their hands of the outcomes Hence why large organizations commonly compartmentalize things to the point that people don't realize they are working on an orphan crushing machine.

Or, they actually do have an intuition of the real objective and they skip steps to more efficiently skip to the outcome.
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