Don > The fact urgently demanding explanation is why a scientist, once having gained authority, would order someone tortured until they screamed with pain.
No, no, there was no real torture. The "victim" was an actor who was only pretending to be receiving the electric shocks but the "subject" who administered the shocks on command of the "director" didn't know that. The experiment was that the "subject" had to ask the "victim" certain questions and if the "victim" couldn't answer them then he, the "subject", was instructed/commanded to administer electric shocks (as he believed) to the "victim". This would encourage the "victim" to do better next time. The experiment was to see whether the "subject" would administer pain, even lethal pain (as he believed it was), to someone, anyone, if an authority figure ordered him to.
The purpose of the experiment was to show that unless a society is disobedient to blank authority the experience seen in the Nazi-Jewish Holocaust could and would occur again. Little did Milgram know his conclusion was prescient and that obedient Americans, who he used as the subjects in his experiments, would actually be seen torturing and committing atrocities themselves. Naturally, since the experiments were so revealing and "anti-social" the authorities (real ones, this time) later banned similar experiments on the basis they were "unethical".
If you haven't read the book it's worth a few bucks to see what Milgram did, especially in the light of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and the "renditioning" which we read about in Europe. |
