Stanley Milgram's 'Dark Side' Experiments Show How To Keep Atrocities From Happening
Friday, January 9, 2015 - 17:10
in Psychology & Sociology
As World War II ended and the Holocaust became shockingly more real than the rumor or propaganda some believed it was, people wondered how it could happen. Why, somewhere along the way, did not more Germans involved in the genocide object? The same was asked of Stalin's Russia, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia.In 1961, psychologist Stanley Milgram set out to answer that, undertaking a series of now infamous experiments on obedience and reprehensible behavior. About two-thirds of Milgram's nearly 800 study subjects, pressed by an authoritative experimenter, were willing to administer increasingly powerful electric shocks to an unseen stranger despite cries of agony and pleas to stop. read more