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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

#31

Post by d1sxeyes »

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…

The Milgram experiment also couldn't be repeated today as it was completely unethical. It caused huge psychological distress to participants to the point that some participants had seizures.

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

#32

Post by d-us-vb »

Sharlin wrote: post #21
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".

A direct conclusion. The insight I'll draw from that is that academia gives voice to the results the current zeitgeist finds interesting and believable without properly verifying the evidence.

See also the replication crisis.

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

#33

Post by stavros »

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.

People that have been treated well are more likely to treat other people well.

If we remove this cycle of decency, what is the natural rate of humans that will hurt others?

The premise is flawed, humans learn from their environment and there's really no way to put a human in a coffin until they're 20 and see what they do then.

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

#34

Post by [deleted] »

bluGill wrote: post #30
embedding-shape wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

[deleted]

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

#35

Post by caseyohara »

whynotmaybe wrote: post #25
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...

The ironic part is the recent fabrication controversy with Ariely. He’s recently had to retract fraudulent papers (one of them, most ironically, on the topic of honesty) because of falsified data. It makes one question the validity of all of his work.

His relationship with Jeffrey Epstein isn’t a good look either.

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

#36

Post by applfanboysbgon »

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.

> as victims become perpetrators, it may be best to segregate victims to prevent future abuse and victimization

Wonderful idea. Let's not forget to segregate the poors, since they commit violent crimes at higher rates too. We can build a perfect utopia if only we just get rid of all the undesirables!

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

#37

Post by card_zero »

kakacik wrote: post #24
newsclues wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (whic…

Back in the course of human evolution there must at some point have been mammals who were not yet riding on the dysfunctional cycle of violence. That means the natural rate must be non-zero, at least, or else the cycle would have no starting momentum.

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

#38

Post by crazygringo »

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 instructions 100% perfectly all the time, and especially not the first time they do something.

> Kaposi and Sumeghy interpret these patterns as a complete breakdown of the supposedly legitimate scientific environment. The subjects were not committing violence for the sake of an orderly memory study. With the scientific elements either forgotten or rushed, the laboratory changed into a setting for unauthorized and senseless violence.

This feels like a huge stretch. Forgetting a step at one point or reading something out loud too early isn't a "complete breakdown of the supposedly legitimate scientific environment" -- a "scientific environment" that is completely fictional to begin with.

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

#39

Post by cucumber3732842 »

arethuza wrote: post #5
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…

On that second point - I can strongly recommend the book Goliath's Curse by Luke Kemp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath%27s_Curse

Wikipedia makes it sound like questionable at best. I'll wait a decade and see if it comes out looking like milk or wine.

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

#40

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]
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