Milgram experiment
description: series of social psychology experiments, studying obedience to authority figures
78 results
Virtual Competition
by Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice E. Stucke · 30 Nov 2016
distancing in decision-making. The Messenger Scenario 43 One famous example—and the basis for Peter Gabriel’s song “Milgram’s 37 (We Do What We’re Told)”22—is Stanley Milgram’s electric shock experiments.23 You might have seen the black-and-white videos24 in which the test subject and a confederate of
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test in which the confederate-learner was to memorize word pairs. Each time the confederate-learner answered incorrectly, the teacher-participant was to administer an electric shock to the learner. A “shock generator” had thirty clearly marked voltage levels, ranging from fifteen to 450 volts, with designations from “Slight Shock” to “Danger
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after the last designation were simply marked “XXX.” Unbeknownst to the teacher-subject, the confederate was not actually receiving electric shocks. The confederate-learner gave standardized responses. In one variation of the experiment, the confederatelearner pounded on the wall of the room in which he was bound to the electric chair after the
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, 7–8, 50 Efficient markets hypothesis, 207–208. See also Neoclassical economics Einstein, Albert, 220 Electricity markets, in U.K., complexity of pricing and, 109 Electric shock experiments, 43–44 Energy and Climate Change Select Committee, in U.K., 138, 142 Energy costs, in U.K., 141–142, 307n36 Enforcement issues, 218–232
Split-Second Persuasion: The Ancient Art and New Science of Changing Minds
by Kevin Dutton · 3 Feb 2011 · 338pp · 100,477 words
accident, on a rather curious phenomenon. It began with a routine conditioning experiment. Dogs, in line with the usual conditioning protocol, were exposed to a pair of stimuli in quick succession – a tone, followed by a harmless, though painful, electric shock – the aim being, through repeated association between the two, to elicit fear
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appear against a backdrop of books – now you know. The accoutrements of knowledge lend their pronouncements that extra degree of oomph. 21Or take Stanley Milgram’s electric shocks experiment at Yale in the sixties. A staggering 65 per cent of those who took part in the study twisted that dial right the way round
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time you get it wrong you’ll receive a painful electric shock. How do you think you’d get on? 15A few years ago, the psychologist Adrian Raine and his colleagues at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles performed an experiment to find out. What they turned up was astonishing. If
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: A Study of Rhetoric and Response at Party Political Conferences.’ The American Journal of Sociology 92 (1986): 110–157. 21 Or take Stanley Milgram’s electric shocks experiment … In 1963, Milgram published a study that has now assumed iconic status in the field of experimental psychology – and which has arguably gone down as the most
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a random sample of respectable, middle-class Americans) were allocated the role of ‘teacher’ opposite an associate of the researcher (the ‘learner’). But this was to be no ordinary teaching assignment. ‘Mistakes’ were to be punished by the administration of electric shocks
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study was presented as an investigation into short-term memory. And ostensibly, the electric shocks were real. But, in reality, the actual focus was on obedience – and the shocks were a sham. The aim was chillingly simple: To what extremes, Milgram wanted to know, were everyday, law-abiding American citizens prepared to go
Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do
by Jeremy Bailenson · 30 Jan 2018 · 302pp · 90,215 words
moral discomfort for virtual behavior toward an animated virtual human? When we consider that the subjects were made uncomfortable by the idea of administering fake electric shocks, what can we expect people will feel when they are engaging in all sorts of fantasy violence and mayhem in virtual reality? This is
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movie.11 The ostensible purpose of the movie was to teach the subjects how an experiment they’d agreed to participate in would work. The movie featured an actor doing a learning task, and receiving painful electrical shocks when he made a wrong answer. After the movie, the subjects began the actual
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subjects watched the training video to the brain activation that occurs when a person is actually doing the task and about to receive his own electric shock. The great part about this design is that subjects never actually got a shock—they just needed to believe they would receive one while
The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure
by Yascha Mounk · 19 Apr 2022 · 442pp · 112,155 words
studies, he learned about a series of recent experiments that showed just how easy it is to get human beings to do terrible things to one another. What happens when a scientist in a white lab coat tells you to keep administering electric shocks to a volunteer even though he is begging you
Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age
by Duncan J. Watts · 1 Feb 2003 · 379pp · 113,656 words
each participant was introduced to the supposed subject of the experiment and was asked to read to him a series of words that he was to repeat. If the subject made a mistake, he was to be punished by receiving an electric shock, administered by the participant. Each successive mistake was to be
Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing
by Rachel Plotnick · 24 Sep 2018 · 359pp · 105,248 words
, “Automagically,” shifts to thinking about buttons as tools to spur machines and electrical forces into action with little human intervention. Chapter 4, “Distant Effects,” recounts experiments with sending touches across distance to demonstrate how fingers could delegate their efforts to machines in order to produce spectacular, shocking, and sometimes dangerous effects
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it. Touch it, and you die.”15 A society grappling with electrification widely debated electricity’s “shocking” nature, both fearing and admiring the power of electric shocks. Medical applications of electricity promised to ameliorate all kinds of ills, while reports of electrical accidents filled up the pages of newspapers and magazines as
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of an electrical (and supposedly unforgettable) performance. A button stood at the center of this experience; one could not turn back from “dancing” once initiating a push (see figure 4.4). Experiments with giving and getting electric shocks were numerous during this time period, and well-known gags such as the “electric girl” at
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George M. Hopkins went so far as to proclaim in his book, Home Mechanics for Amateurs (1903), that “the giving of electric shocks to one’s friends is always a pleasant pastime,” encouraging young experimenters to literally
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” or cause and effect—could take a real psychological toll. In fact, social psychologist Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment (1961) exposed this problem, as he investigated what would happen if he could convince participants to administer electric shocks to other study subjects via a push button with labels such as “Danger: Severe Shock.”19
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. Electrical Catechism: An Introductory Treatise on Electricity and Its Uses. New York: American Electrician Co., 1901. Shermer, Michael. “What Milgram’s Shock Experiments Really Mean.” http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-milgrams-shock-experiments-really-mean/. Sherwood, Mary Elizabeth Wilson. Amenities of Home. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1881. Simon, Linda
Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else
by Jordan Ellenberg · 14 May 2021 · 665pp · 159,350 words
mixing short and long connections “small worlds,” a phrase that goes back to the 1960s and the social psychologist Stanley Milgram. Milgram is probably best known for convincing subjects to deliver fake electric shocks to actors under authoritarian suasion, but in his cheerier moments he studied more positive forms of human connection. In the
Statistics hacks
by Bruce Frey · 9 May 2006 · 755pp · 121,290 words
. With his obedience studies of the early 1960s, Milgram demonstrated that when people of authority (such as research assistants in lab coats) ask study participants to do something that makes them uncomfortable, such as administering (or believing that they are administering) an electric shock to another research subject, a surprising number of people
Influence: Science and Practice
by Robert B. Cialdini · 1 Jan 1984 · 405pp · 121,531 words
showed the same results when coeds were required to endure pain rather than embarrassment to get into a group (Gerard & Mathewson, 1966). The more electric shock a woman received as part of the initiation ceremony, the more she later persuaded herself that her new group and its activities were interesting, intelligent
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1A program of investigation conducted by Kenneth Craig and his associates demonstrates how the experience of pain can be affected by the principle of social proof. In one study (Craig & Prkachin, 1978), subjects who received a series of electric shocks felt less pain (as indicated by self-reports, psychophysical measures of sensory sensitivity
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person is to be called the Learner. The other participant’s job will be to test the Learner’s memory and to deliver increasingly strong electric shocks for every mistake; this person will be designated the Teacher. Naturally, you get a bit nervous at this news. Your apprehension increases when, after
Competition Overdose: How Free Market Mythology Transformed Us From Citizen Kings to Market Servants
by Maurice E. Stucke and Ariel Ezrachi · 14 May 2020 · 511pp · 132,682 words
to memorize word pairs. You’re in one room in control of an electric shock generator, and the learner is in another room, strapped into a chair that delivers the electric shocks. Each time the learner answers incorrectly, you must administer an electric shock as punishment. The shock generator has thirty clearly marked voltage levels ranging
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450 volts, with designations from Slight Shock to Danger: Severe Shock. Two switches after the last designation are simply marked XXX. Would you administer any electrical shock? If so, when would you stop? Would you stop when the learner gives a slight grunt from the 75-, 90-, and 105-volt shocks? At
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“replacing unpleasant reality with desirable rhetoric, gilding the frame so that the real picture is disguised.”54 In a nutshell, to kudzu. In Milgram’s experiment, the participants delivering the electric shock were “teachers,” who thought they were “helping” the “learners.” Likewise, we saw how lobbyists and policy makers use the competition ideology to
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there in steps that are so small and incremental that one barely registers the difference between one step and the next.56 In Milgram’s experiment, the intensity of the electric shocks increased in 15-volt increments. Each increase seemed small, because the increases were relative and on a continuum rather than in isolation
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-world equivalent is ideology. We have been sold the myth that competition is always good, a miracle elixir. So, while we may not be administering electrical shocks to the people we perceive as our rivals in day-to-day life—whether they are competing with us in business or simply angling to
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