Many years ago, Stanley Milgram, a graduate student under Solomon Asch, wanted to conduct a study on the sources of destructive obedience. He played around with different scenarios to conduct his study. He finally found one that worked which involved a test subject being told by a man in a white lab coat to ask questions to an actor (unknown to the test subject) and give them an electric shock for a wrong answer. During this study, Milgram and his associates predicted that only .1% would administer the "450 Volts" shock; this shock would indeed kill you. After finishing his study, Milgram was dumbfounded by his results that a whopping 62% of participants in the study administered the 450 Volt shock.
Now you may think that his results are complete nonsense because who in their right mind would kill someone just because they are being told to by a man in a white lab coat? I thought the same thing but this shows that a majority of us fall prey to people in authority and peer pressure. This man in the lab coat looks totally official and we wouldn't want to disappoint him and ruin the study, right? Of course not, we want to give him the results he wants and fit in because we are afraid of discrimination or consequences for not following orders.
Rather curious study!I am pretty surprised by the results showing that more than 60% of us are killers. That means I certainly have at least one friend that is in this list or may be I am killer as well.
Holiday