learntoquestion ltq discussions

Questions to Consider:

Please use the following quote and questions as a guide for your post. You should also refer directly to the documentary of the Milgram experiment as well. You can choose to focus on one of the question sets, or to incorporate several of them into your response.

Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman writes: “The most frightening news brought about by the Holocaust and by what we learned of its perpetrators was not the likelihood that ‘this’ could be done to us, but the idea that we could do it.”

1. Do you think that everyone has the potential to become a perpetrator of violence against others? What do the Milgram experiments suggest about the aspects of human behavior that could make it possible for us to willingly inflict pain on others?

2. Do you think that experiments like Milgram’s actually explain ordinary people’s active participation in violence, mass atrocities and genocide? What are the other factors that may come into play? What else, beside the blind following of authority, contributes to some people's willingness to inflict pain on others?

3. What are some of the important factors and perhaps even personality traits that led the ‘teachers’ in the Milgram experiment to disobey the ‘experimenters’ commands to continue to shock the ‘learner’? Can we, and should we, attempt to create societies that value and encourage the traits of people who disobey unethical authority figures?

Word Count Requirement: 500-750 words

Readings to Reference:

Please refer to the ideas, either using a quote or paraphrasing, from at least one of the readings in your response.

Rethinking one of Psychology’s most infamous experiments (Cari Romm, 2015)

How the Nazi’s Defense of “Just Following Orders” Plays Out in the Mind (Joshua Barajas, 2016)

The Real Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment (Maria Korrinkova, 2015)

Rubrics to Review:

LTQ Rubric

Anybody and everybody is capable of harming or even killing others, especially when faced with an authority figure. Like we learned earlier in this unit, people tend to be okay with doing harmful acts if they can justify their actions or pawn their blame off onto someone else. An authority figure gives them both of these. The person can say “they told me to so I had no choice” or “it’s their fault they’re in charge.” This can be seen in the Milgram experiment because one of the participants asked the experimenter if he “took full responsibility” so he didn’t feel as guilty continuing the experiment after hearing the learner’s pained cries. People are also conditioned to be obedient from a young age, making it harder if not nearly impossible for most people to disobey authority, regardless of the task and the harm it may cause.

Nazis are a major example of this phenomenon as many Nazis’ defense for their atrocities after the war was that they were following orders. Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann even went so far as to say “he and other low-level officers were 'forced to serve as mere instruments'” (Barajas 1). This does have different pressures than Milgram’s experiment as Nazi soldiers faced harsh punishment or even death for not following orders, while Milgram’s participants could leave with no consequence, but the fundamental idea is the same. The Holocaust isn’t the only example of this, but it is the most famous.

There are also non-government examples such as the Rwandan genocide. While the government did play a role in the genocide, it was mostly led by Hutus. This as well as Milgram’s experiment reveals that it doesn’t matter who the person of authority is, humans will follow their orders. This is also seen in the infamous Stanford prison experiment where both guards and prisoners were middle-class white male college students. The participants were quite literally the same social status wise, the prisoners still followed the guards’ every order. While this experiment has been proved to not have the best practices and some of the participants could have just been acting, the experiment started out as legitimate and while weak, still backs the findings in Milgram’s experiment.

Another major factor in a person’s willingness to hurt someone else is how much they believe what they are doing is right, even if they’ve been conditioned to believe it. Propaganda plays a key role in people’s beliefs and can change the course of society, often for the worse. This was present in Nazi Germany when there was propaganda for killing Jews, and so more people were conditioned to believe they deserved to be killed and agreed with the Nazis procedures. I think it would be interesting to see how exposing participants in Milgram’s experiment to propaganda about how bad shocks are for you for example or how important punishment is for learning, and compare the results. I also think propaganda can be used for good and could help us create a society of non-conformists, and it would be interesting to further investigate its impact on society throughout the years, especially in major political movements like the Nazi Party.

I think that every single person on this planet, no matter who you are, where you live, or what you do, has potential to become a perpetrator of violence against others. While people often think of themselves as better people who wouldn’t ever do something like that, there are often many variables in situations where things like this could happen. For example, in the Milgram Experiment, the Teacher before starting the experiment probably thought that he was someone who would never try and hurt someone else, but the experiment had a lot of factors that influenced the Teacher. One of these factors were the Experimenter telling the Teacher to keep going, regardless of how the Learner was acting. Results varied based on whether the Experimenter was in the room or not there at all, as well as other factors, but some of the Teachers still went all of the way on the shock board. This shows how if an authority figure isn’t physically present, while there is a decrease in the number, there will still be people who listen to what they say, even if it is hurting another person.

No matter how many times a person could say that they would never do something that would hurt another person, you never really know what you are going to do until you are in that position. People might not be willing to do something to hurt someone else, but when things like personal biases and how they view these other people, their ideas might change. This especially happens when these factors are mixed, for example, when an authority figure is telling people to do something that goes along with their own personal beliefs and biases. The following is a quote from Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman: “The most frightening news brought about by the Holocaust and by what we learned of its perpetrators was not the likelihood that ‘this’ could be done to us, but the idea that we could do it.” This quote shows how there are terrible things that happen, like the Holocaust, but people always say they wouldn’t be the ones to do it. This however is not true. The Milgram experiment shows how easily many people can be influenced to do horrible things to other people. The Holocaust, as well as many other genocides and mass events like it, was done by people. They were heavily influenced by the government, going along with their personal biases, and killed millions of people.

Though it may seem cheesy, people have a desire to please others and be approved of by them. This phenomenon extends to fulfilling others’ demands and obeying their orders, often regardless of what the consequences of those actions may be. This behavior is so ingrained in us that it has resulted in altered brain chemistry, as, according to the article, “How Nazi’s Defense of “Just Following Orders” Plays Out in the Mind,” “people actually feel disconnected from their actions when they comply with orders, even though they’re the ones committing the act” (Barajas 1). This is because “people [experience] their actions more as “passive movements than fully voluntary actions” when they follow orders,” and likely consider the dangerous or even cruel actions to be the product of someone else’s malevolence and their own passivity or diligent obedience (Barajas 1). These results point to the conflict between our natural desire not to harm others and our instinct to obey orders. In many scenarios, the latter overpowers the former, meaning that everyone has the potential to become a perpetrator of violence against others, as is inherent in human nature.

However, the pressure to obey alone would not cause any reasonable person to commit crimes that are grave and cruel against others. The decision to act in such a way should never be attributed solely to a desire to be accepted, as the evil behind these crimes cannot be disregarded. There are many other forces at play when people act cruelly and abusively. As Watermelon explained, “Another major factor in a person’s willingness to hurt someone else is how much they believe what they are doing is right, even if they’ve been conditioned to believe it. Propaganda plays a key role in people’s beliefs and can change the course of society, often for the worse.” This can be seen in events such as the Holocaust, in which many Germans were conditioned to view Jews as sub-human, making them more willing to act cruelly or support cruel actions done against them. This strategy carried out by the government in order to manipulate and ruin their society can be seen in many other tragic events around the world, primarily wars and genocides, as people are so conditioned that their minds feel less dissonance and, therefore, less guilt.

But there is still hope. In Milgram’s experiments, there were numerous instances in which “teachers” disobeyed the “experimenters,” as they realized their actions were wrong. Disobedience is still common in our society, though not as much as obedience is. Often, particularly among people of younger ages, disobedience comes from a desire to fit in with others and look “cool,” as following the rules exactly is sometimes a subject of ridicule. As people grow older, they develop more fixed principles, and if these principles are acted against by orders given to them, then people are less likely to obey such commands. For this reason, many people of authority will try to convince their subjects to obey them by masquerading their orders under a different set of principles and ideals. To combat this abuse of power, Patrick Haggard, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London, claims that “people who give orders should … be held more responsible for the actions and outcomes of those they coerce” (Barajas 3). Accountability is key in such situations, and we should not let abusive rulers get away with controlling their subjects.

Learner vs. Teacher. A different wording could be Victim vs. Perpetrator. In that context, it seems different, but it is very similar to each other. The Milgram experiment conducted a learner vs. teacher experiment, where the teacher would shock the learner whenever they got an answer wrong. Although the experiment sounds inhumane, it tested to see how the teacher would react to increasing the shock level of the learner. Whenever the teacher felt conflicted to shock the learner, the experimenter would urge on the teacher to continue the shocks. Milgram’s experiment had a majority of participants who listened to what the experimenter had told and continued the shock. The teacher, who is considered the perpetrator in this case, obeys the experimenter, even though he does not need to. It is a matter of obedience and how strong the willingness to obey is. Humans are structured to obey authority and the risk of obeying would mean that people are more likely to obey a higher authority. Due to the higher authority that the experimenter had over the teacher, the teacher assumed that they needed to obey his commands because it is the normative pressure that controls how they act. When the teacher was asked to stop shocking the learner, Milgram asked them why they continued even though they could’ve stopped if they wanted to. Most people said that they wanted to, but they could not because the experimenter kept telling them to go on. There are two choices that the teacher could’ve made. One, he could’ve stopped shocking the learner. Two, he continued to shock the learner, until the experimenter said stop. Choosing option two shows cognitive dissonance because our bodies are telling us to obey the higher authority, but our own belief is telling us to not continue to harm the person.

Applying this obey and authority relationship, is frequently seen when it comes to mass genocides, such as the Holocaust. The Holocaust was known for its execution of many Jews. One of the Nazi soldiers shifted “the responsibility for the deaths of millions of Jews to his superiors.” Hitler and his associates were in control of the mass genocide of Jews and because he was of higher authority, the reason as to why they could so easily kill Jews was because the blame could be shifted on Hitler and his associates. Their cognitive is telling them that killing these Jews is wrong, but their dissonance is telling them because someone is of higher authority they should obey them. The mass genocide of Jews was committed by people who were not born to hate Jews, but this idea of informational conformity engaged them in groupthink. Authority is not the idea of just one figure, but authority can also mean a large group of people affecting the way one should act in a group setting. The more we engage in a group setting, we think that we should obey how the group works and conform to their ways. Engagement in groupthink is incredibly harmful to society because in groupthink we rationalize our bad actions to justify ourselves as a good person. Milgram’s experiment compares how one authority figure can affect multiple people to harm an innocent individual and how high the potential can be for a human population to harm millions.

Every person has the capacity to become a perpetrator of violence. Whether or not this will happen depends on the surrounding circumstances, where responsibility falls, and what the social expectations are. In the documentary on the Milgram experiment, we saw that people are generally reluctant to harm other individuals. However, if it is a person in a position of power telling them to harm someone else, they are more likely to do so. In fact “a full 65 percent of people went all the way” to 450 volts when asked to do so (Romm 2015). The likelihood someone will listen increases if the person in power insists. This likelihood grows even higher if the person in power is close by. People are hardwired to obey commands that come from people in power and “actually feel disconnected from their actions when they comply with orders, even though they’re the ones committing the act” (Barajas 2016). The cognitive dissonance experienced when people obeyed was justified by the fact that they were just following orders. Additionally, it greatly mattered who was to blame. It seems people are more likely to harm others if they know or think it will have no repercussions. Furthermore, it matters what others are doing. Groupthink and the pressure to conform to societal expectations further increase the likelihood that people will harm others because “our behavior largely conforms to our preconceived expectations” (Korrinkova 2015). Moreover, proximity, both mental and physical, matters. If one is able to distance themselves from the person they are meant to harm, whether that be by being physically far away or “othering” them, they can with less difficulty harm the person.

This made me think about Nazi concentration camps during WW2. In order to kill such large groups of people, the Nazis began to use gas chambers. This created greater physical distance between Nazi soldiers and their victims. This doesn’t however explain why the soldiers would continue even if not directly supervised. It is likely that in large part soldiers were extremely afraid of the kind of Panoptican that was German society during the time, and thought that if they didn’t obey there would be repercussions. Additionally, in the years leading up to the Holocaust, there was widespread propaganda against Jews blaming them for the Germans losing WW1. This “othering” of the Jews contributed to sectarianism which made them seem less than human. Young people grew up seeing Jews as the enemy. The “othering” of Jews and indoctrination combined made it easier for ordinary people to ignore or justify what was going on around them and created emotional distance between them. This didn’t seem troubling to ordinary people because it all happened so gradually. When Jews were physically distanced from society, it became even easier to ignore anything that might be happening to them. While it might seem tempting to create societies that value and encourage the traits of people who disobey unethical authority figures, these traits are often the same ones that make some people less likely to listen to authority in general. These kinds of traits, if widespread, could be both destabilizing for and have detrimental effects on organized society as a whole.

Although each and every one of us has the potential to become a perpetrator of violence against others, the extremity of violence varies based on an individual's life experiences. The Milgram experiments found that commands from an authority figure can influence individuals to behave in ways that are against their morals and wishes. However, they fail to address factors of religion, race, gender, sex, age, criminal history, nationality, and other facets of identity. The participants were assured they weren't hurting anyone, the experiments were short, and the subjects were not representative of the world’s population. These faults suggest that Milgram's results were flawed in nature for explaining the behavior of Holocaust perpetrators because they only included white American males. The Holocaust was a systematic state-sponsored persecution and genocide of Jewish people, and Milgram did not encompass social identity theory and “us” vs. “them” in his studies. More than just obeying authority, Nazis were conditioned to hate Jewish people. In their post, Watermelon wrote that “propaganda plays a key role in people’s beliefs and can change the course of society, often for the worse.” Propaganda encourages groupthink and creates a desire to conform so strong that it overpowers critical thought. Subjects in Milgram’s experiment were not living in a dictatorship and would have most likely felt neutral to each other. In the Stanford Prison Experiment, “study subjects, middle-class college students, had answered a questionnaire about their family backgrounds, physical- and mental health histories, and social behavior, and had been deemed “normal”; a coin flip divided them into prisoners and guards” (Korrinkova 1). Again, the experiment did not encompass a wider range of test subjects The results do show that the guards “began humiliating and psychologically abusing the prisoners,” which would suggest that humans will easily follow orders to do harm to those they see as beneath them, but we simply do not know what would have happened if they were all women. or all rich, or if the guards were white and the prisoners black (Korrinkova 1). There are still valid takeaways from Milgram and Zimbardo’s experiments, like the human tendency to obey orders even when they’re causing violence. These results of “just following orders” can be valid, but none of the experiments address one glaring issue for examining the psychology behind the Holocaust: the test subjects aren’t committing genocide. Normal people’s willingness to inflict pain on other humans may only go so far. “Teachers” in Milgram's experiments may have believed that they might be killing the subject in the other room, but were still assured that no harm was being done and the experiment must go on. This differs greatly from the knowledge and participation Nazi’s would have had in death camps.

The Milgram experiments can help explain part of the reason why so many perpetrators of the Holocaust were able to do horrifying things; obeying authority was deeply ingrained in them. They suggest that some of these people saw it impossible to disobey the authorities. Nevertheless, the experiments fail to explain how authorities, the ones making the orders, were able to give them. This is why there is great importance in creating societies that value and encourage traits of disobedience of unethical behavior of authority figures. It is impossible for each and every person to become someone who can walk a different path, disobeying an authority figure, but we can still try to hold strong in our beliefs, and strive to vote and elect officials that will be ethical.

A crucial component of thinking about the role that authority plays in situations like the one represented by the milgram experiment is acknowledging that by fostering people to follow authority, they are more likely to follow all kinds of authority. The kind of people who are more likely to disobey unethical authority figures are also the kind of people who are more likely to disobey all kinds of authority. In the school system, and in many families, children are taught that to disobey is paramount to disrespect. This learned behavior is what often leads people to follow unethical authority figures, because they are rewarded the same for following all kinds of authority, no matter the cost. Fostering healthy levels of disobedience can be necessary to prevent unjust leaders in our society, but it is almost impossible to do so within the system we currently operate under.

Of course, society and manipulative authority figures cannot be solely blamed. As laid out in the article “How Nazi’s Defense of “Just Following Orders” Plays Out in the Mind”, the effect of following orders dampens the feelings of responsibility when committing such acts. More than that, when performing an action when following orders, neural activity was lower than when performing the action of their own volition. Haggard says in the article “But, “our study does suggest that this claim might potentially correspond to the basic experience that the person had of their action at the time,” Haggard said.” This likely contributes to how the argument of “just following orders” can seem like a completely reasonable explanation to the people perpetrating these acts, because in their experience of the action, they were not fully responsible for what they were doing. This is perpetuated by the leaders when, like in the Milgram experiment, the perpetrator is told that all the responsibility will fall upon the leader, and not themselves, because these leaders know this will make it easier to control people.

As shown in the Milgram experiment, not everyone, when given the choice between inflicting harm on someone else, and disobeying authority, will choose the former, but that by no means implies that those people are any less passive than the rest. Within each person, there is something that could cause them to be violent. For some, that could be the forcing hand of authority, but for others it could be their family or friends. An emotional distance between the person causing the harm and the person being harmed is another aspect that can lessen the pressure needed to turn someone violent. This comes up in the Holocaust, because before the genocide began, Hitler embarked on a long campaign to dehumanize Jewish people and get German citizens used to the idea of perpetrating violence against them. This slow desensitization created the emotional distance necessary to perpetrate such a level of violence. Another component of this in the Holocaust was the use of machines to commit the murders. By changing the action from the personal act of shooting or stabbing someone to the impersonal act of simply flipping a switch, it allowed the Nazi’s to distance themselves from the action. This was somewhat echoed in the Milgram experiment, when the created a variation in which the “teacher” would be forced to hold the hand of the “learner” on the electrified plate to receive the shock. In this variation, a lesser percentage of participants continued to deliver the shocks. By touching someone's hand directly for the purpose of causing them pain, the pain caused becomes more personal, and when you are causing someone pain personally rather than impersonally, you are more likely to feel responsible.

As said in “The Real Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment”, “The lesson of Stanford isn’t that any random human being is capable of descending into sadism and tyranny. It’s that certain institutions and environments demand those behaviors—and, perhaps, can change them.” In prisons, violence is expected, and sometimes also demanded of guards, which was echoed in the Stanford prison experiment. By recreating the circumstances around prison, they also replicated the corresponding social pressures. In doing this, they created a study on the psychology of prison, not of the human mind. As 0_0 said, “Which is further proven in the article “The Real Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment” by Maria Korrinkova where she writes about how in the Stanford Prison Experiment once the prison guards realized they would have no consequence to violating the rules on how to treat the prisoners they continued to do it,”. This connects to the idea of the difference between social rules and lawful rules. While the written rule of the prison may be not to mistreat prisoners, when mistreatment becomes normalized by peers and authority figures, it becomes a standard.