Peer Feedbaack
Originally posted by purplekiwi on September 24, 2024 20:55
I don’t believe that everyone has the capability to become a perpetrator of violence, but a good number of people do. If we think logistics wise, not everyone is able to stomach violence and gore. Even if it’s just hearing someone in pain, like in the Milgram experiment, there are at least a few people who wouldn’t be able to handle it. Now regardless, the Milgram experiment did expose a lot about human psychology and bring insight into why we behave the way we do. The Milgram experiment showed that when we are exposed to 2 uncomfortable choices, we choose the path of least resistance. For most individuals in the experiment, the path of least resistance was to continue to shock the learner, even if they thought it was wrong. Despite this choice however, people still ended up feeling guilty. To combat this guilt people tried to lessen their personal responsibility. If they weren’t held responsible for their actions, they wouldn’t feel as guilty about them. When people took away their personal responsibility, it was easier for them to inflict pain on the learner, even to deadly levels.
Given these findings, the Milgram experiment does explain how mass atrocities occurred, to an extent. Even when people disagreed with authority figures or the precedent set, they either complied out of wanting to fit in or because they didn’t feel personally responsible for what happened. Although it’s clear that people tend to blindly follow authority, there were other factors that came into play. These atrocities didn’t go 0 to 100 in a day, leaders took small deliberate steps towards what they wanted to achieve. Similarly to the Milgram experiment, leaders slowly increased the severity of their actions so that people wouldn’t realize how drastic the situation had become. It was much easier to accept the incremental addition of violence, surveillance, and discrimination, rather than suddenly end up under an authoritative government. Despite all this though, the study fails to consider how relationships played a huge role in these occurrences. In many world atrocities, there is an us vs them mentality. In the American South it was rich, land-owning whites, versus black slaves. During the Holocaust it was the Aryan race vs the Jews. This othering and dehumanization of a group of people made it far easier to commit violence against them. This idea was explored more in The Stanford prison experiment.
In the experiment, researchers purposefully gave the prisoners “a numbered gown” which was called a dress by them. They did this so that the prisoners would “feel humiliated” and “feel emasculated”. This humiliation would not only lessen the self-esteem of the prisoners, but also gave the guards reason to feel morally superior to them. This dynamic made it easier for the guards to be comfortable with harming the prisoners because they were already dehumanized and viewed as less than human. Furthermore, when the guards slowly started to increase their violence towards the prisoners, the warden would turn a blind eye which gave them implicit permission to continue their behavior. This experiment showed just how dangerous it can be to combine these different dynamics as it can create an environment for people to inflict pain on one another.
Despite the negative outcomes, these experiments did show some outliers. In the Milgram experiment some people chose to fight against the authority figure and stop shocking the learner even after considerable pressure. These people most likely stopped because they had higher self esteems and therefore were more steadfast in their beliefs. They are leaders in themselves and could be integral for preventing mass atrocities in a similar manner, by going against the status quo. There are other factors that would dissuade people from hurting the learner, mainly their relationship with the person they’re shocking. If the people who were the learners in the experiment were family members of friends of the teachers, they would have been far less likely to hurt them. Even if these people belonged to the same micro-communities, such as sharing a culture or being high school alumni, that could have been enough of a connection to stop them from continuing the experiment. Although there is a lot to learn from the Milgram and Stanford prison experiments, there are also many nuances that are lost through the processes used.
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I think it’s interesting how this post talks about how the Milgram experiment can be used to account for mass atrocities. I agree with this because I believe on a simpler level, like how this post mentions, people are “ either compelled out of wanting to fit in or because they didn’t feel personally responsible for what happened”. I like how this post mentions this because I believe that the root of mass atrocities is the everyday person eventually obeying authority in order to fit in. One thing I think this writer can do to elevate their post is connect this back to our in class discussions. One example of this could be mentioning the “ Obedience Theory” and the “ in group” , however even without the mentioning of this I believe this post is well written. Something that I haven’t considered until reading this post was the possibility of the ‘student’ in the milgram experiment being a loved one or a person that we care about. I think this point is interesting because this would most likely change the outcome of the Milgram experiment if the people who were getting hurt were the ones that we knew. This idea has me wondering what would happen if the person who was the “ student’ was someone who we do not like. Would we be more prone to participating? Overall I think this post was well written and carefully thought out, the points made were concise and supported with what has taken place in the Milgram experiment, so overall a great job.