Audio tapes reveal mass rule-breaking in Milgram's obedience experiments • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by Sharlin » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 12:37 PM UTC

palata wrote: post #13

I have always been pretty critical about "psychology" as a field, but always kept famous successful experiments (like Milgram and the Stanford prison experiment) as examples that "sometimes it's possible to actually get interesting results". Turns out those are not valid examples either. So I am genuinely wondering: what remains of the field of psychology, except for a group of people who find it interesting to think…

I'd think the conclusion you should draw is not that "even the famous experiments were not valid, so nothing in psychology is" but rather "the validity of an experiment does not correlate with how famous it is".

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

#22

Post by embedding-shape » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 12:38 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #19

embedding-shape wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there examples of actual, useful and valid conclusions coming from that field? In order for someone to answer this, I think you need to come up with some sort of definition what "actual", "useful" and "valid" actually means here in this context. Lots of stuff from psychology been successfully applied to treat people in therapy with various issues, but is that "valid" enough for you? Something tells me you alrea…

Psychology "knows" that people don't enter treatment until things are really bad, and then they get better - no matter what treatment is provided. Finding treatment that is better than others is the important part and they also know they are not very good at that.

> and then they get better - no matter what treatment is provided

I don't know what experience of therapy you've had in the past, but this is typically not how it works. People get better when a treatment is applied that is suitable to them as a person and the context, not sure where you'd get the whole "people get better no matter what treatment is applied", haven't been true in my experience.

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

#23

Post by Spooky23 » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 12:44 PM UTC

user2722 wrote: post #4

Mordisquitos wrote: post #3

Interesting. If we can assume the experimenter's failure to enforce the rules was mere clumsiness or incompetence, rather than an indicator of underlying intentional manipulation of the experimental conditions à la Stanford prison experiment, this can be interpreted in many different ways. The (eventually) disobedient subjects were better at respecting the experimental process they were given than the "obedient" ones…

It really calls into questions the conclusions drawn from the last 50 years. Here's the ones disproven I remember: * kids grow to be rich because they accept delayed gratification * alpha males are the leader of the pack and all other males are useless * people accept violence if there is a higher authority which justifies it with a reason How many people suffered or delivered suffering because of their beliefs in th…

Alot of the problem with these “disproven” things is over broad scope or abused in the popular media beyond comprehension.

The delayed gratification thing in particular is correlation vs. causation. It was really more about trust. Forcing kids to delay gratification is meaningless or counterproductive.

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

#24

Post by kakacik » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 12:48 PM UTC

newsclues wrote: post #12

bambax wrote: post #9

> By staying silent and letting the memory study fall apart, the experimenter allowed an atmosphere of illegitimate violence to flourish. Many people are cruel. Not all people, maybe; not most people, also maybe; but some people enjoy hurting others. We see this everywhere. Isn't it possible that this kind of profile jumped on the occasion to inflict pain on people with no fear of repercussions? In other words, isn't…

People that have been abused are more likely to abuse others. If we remove this cycle of abuse, what is the natural rate of humans that will hurt others? An uncomfortable idea, as victims become perpetrators, it may be best to segregate victims to prevent future abuse and victimization.

Nobody can answer that. Abuse can be low intensity, spread across large period of time or intense 1-off event and resulting damage can be similar. Spread across whole lifetimes till the point of experiment.

Extremely individual reactions, what makes one tougher breaks another completely and permanently, and everything in between.

I'd say everybody experienced some sort and level of abuse, typical school bullies (which were usually also bullied somehow, hence the behavior).

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

#25

Post by whynotmaybe » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 12:49 PM UTC

palata wrote: post #13

I have always been pretty critical about "psychology" as a field, but always kept famous successful experiments (like Milgram and the Stanford prison experiment) as examples that "sometimes it's possible to actually get interesting results". Turns out those are not valid examples either. So I am genuinely wondering: what remains of the field of psychology, except for a group of people who find it interesting to think…

In Dan Ariely's book, "predictably irrational", there's a chapter about how everyone cheats a little.

And based on everyone I've met, and on Dan Ariely's own actions (1), I've concluded this one is true.

We all cheat a little from time to time.

Ex : for me, driving a few km/h above the speed limit is "cheating a little"

1 : https://www.businessinsider.com/dan-ariely-duke-fraud-invest...

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

#26

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 12:53 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #19

embedding-shape wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there examples of actual, useful and valid conclusions coming from that field? In order for someone to answer this, I think you need to come up with some sort of definition what "actual", "useful" and "valid" actually means here in this context. Lots of stuff from psychology been successfully applied to treat people in therapy with various issues, but is that "valid" enough for you? Something tells me you alrea…

Psychology "knows" that people don't enter treatment until things are really bad, and then they get better - no matter what treatment is provided. Finding treatment that is better than others is the important part and they also know they are not very good at that.

[deleted]

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

#27

Post by p-e-w » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 12:53 PM UTC

yashasolutions wrote: post #20

That's an interesting perspective, and it does expand how we can interpret the Milgram experiment That said the study has been replicated many times since the original, with researchers adjusting different parameters like participant screening, changing the gender balance, or varying the roles (teacher/student, researcher/technician...) Across these variations, the overall result stays quite consistent: under certain…

> Across these variations, the overall result stays quite consistent: under certain conditions, ordinary people can be led to do harmful things.

The pop culture version of what happened in those experiments is “regular people will administer potentially lethal shocks when told to”, and that claim has been refuted experimentally many times over.

Contrary to most reports, the original experimenters never told participants that the shocks are supposedly lethal or even dangerous. When participants were actually told that there was a health risk, and that they should ignore it, the vast majority of participants refused to administer the shocks in a later recreation.[1]

In other words, the Milgram experiment, as commonly understood, is somewhere between sensationalism and an outright lie.

[1] https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/3/2/194

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

#28

Post by IanCal » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 1:04 PM UTC

palata wrote: post #13

I have always been pretty critical about "psychology" as a field, but always kept famous successful experiments (like Milgram and the Stanford prison experiment) as examples that "sometimes it's possible to actually get interesting results". Turns out those are not valid examples either. So I am genuinely wondering: what remains of the field of psychology, except for a group of people who find it interesting to think…

The results absolutely are interesting - in fact they’re far stronger for the willingness of many to inflict violence than the original description suggested.

> While every obedient participant reliably pressed the shock lever, they regularly neglected or ruined the other steps required to justify the shock.

Procedural violations here include things like asking the question while the person in the other room was still screaming.

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

#29

Post by user2722 » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 1:09 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #23

user2722 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really calls into questions the conclusions drawn from the last 50 years. Here's the ones disproven I remember: * kids grow to be rich because they accept delayed gratification * alpha males are the leader of the pack and all other males are useless * people accept violence if there is a higher authority which justifies it with a reason How many people suffered or delivered suffering because of their beliefs in th…

Alot of the problem with these “disproven” things is over broad scope or abused in the popular media beyond comprehension. The delayed gratification thing in particular is correlation vs. causation. It was really more about trust. Forcing kids to delay gratification is meaningless or counterproductive.

Agree. But according to Gemini [for what's worth] the final 1990 Mashmallow's study [since first versions were cautious] did indeed jump to conclusions to point there was a causation to a better later life. The media might have amplified, but the wrong (or misleading) conclusion was already present in the _scientific_ paper.

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

#30

Post by bluGill » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 1:24 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #22

bluGill wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Psychology "knows" that people don't enter treatment until things are really bad, and then they get better - no matter what treatment is provided. Finding treatment that is better than others is the important part and they also know they are not very good at that.

> and then they get better - no matter what treatment is provided I don't know what experience of therapy you've had in the past, but this is typically not how it works. People get better when a treatment is applied that is suitable to them as a person and the context, not sure where you'd get the whole "people get better no matter what treatment is applied", haven't been true in my experience.

I'm only reporting what I heard in my intro to psychology class years ago... Still, this is more revision to a mean applying. There are for sure treatments that are better than doing nothing, there are also treatments worse than doing nothing. But in general people tend to get better after a time. (they often get worse again in a few months, but this was not covered in class).