Comments on: Milgram Experiment

By: Richard Vickers

Richard Vickers — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 22:32:30 +0000

If you are interested in this you may also wabt to check out a 2008 German film called ‘The Wave’ based on an experiment carried out by a school teacher in California in 1967 in an attempt to show his students through practice how Hitler and the Nazi party came to do such terrible things.

By: Nikki

Nikki — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 13:25:44 +0000

I just wanted to thank you for posting this video. I have my psych exam on Monday and have just taken a break in revision. I sat down to have some lunch and thought I’d see if I could find Derren’s version of the Milgram experiment to remind me of the details. Imagine my delight when I saw this. An experiment I’d read about lots over the last year and now I get to see it in action. A fascinating and disturbing experiment.

By: Matt Blais

Matt Blais — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:54:54 +0000

One of the most important experiments of our time

By: Berber Anna

Berber Anna — Tue, 26 May 2009 23:28:56 +0000

flapjack: It’s not the voltage that’ll kill you, it’s the amperage, afaik. Only the voltage is shown on the device, so the lethality of the shocks is unknown. The sounds from the other room make it abundantly clear that there’s serious pain and very probably serious harm going on, though, so I don’t think the subjects are merely unaware of the ‘consequences’ of their actions…

By: Charlie Brown

Charlie Brown — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:54:57 +0000

Thanks to The Heist I remembered this experiment for my Psychology exam. There was a 12-mark question on obedience and it came in very handy, believe me. Derren, you make learning fun!…

By: Hayley

Hayley — Mon, 25 May 2009 10:34:26 +0000

Yay – my favourite! Thank you very much for the vid x x x

By: flapjack

flapjack — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:19:38 +0000

I first heard of the Milgram Experiment in “the Economist” and a few months later saw it in “The Heist”.
I think Victoria makes a valid point, that unless it’s clearly understood how fatal a 240 volt jolt can be (the equivalent of sticking your fingers in an eletrical socket) it’s impossible to guage whether the test subject understands the full significance of what they’re doing.
Re. Gary’s comment… I didn’t see that one. However, I got talking to a friend I met recently a few weeks back who I always thought was a fairly level-headed animal loving pacifist.
He confessed to me that when he was in his mid-teens, a gang he was trying to impress persuaded him to whack a kitten with a baseball bat, as if it was a ball.
He seemed genuinely sorry to have gone through with it, but it gave me cold shivers to think this reasonably rational guy I thought I knew who’d since taken up buddhism could cave in to peer pressure so easily and do something so morally abhorrent. How much would you need to join a gang and get their approval to do something like that?
I had real difficulty shaking that image of him from my head later…

By: Berber Anna

Berber Anna — Sat, 23 May 2009 22:34:31 +0000

Victoria: The authority figure did assure them that the shocks did ‘no permanent harm’, but at the same time, they heard cries (and later an ominous silence) from the ‘other volunteer’ that would indicate otherwise. I think that’s part of the experiment — do people use their own best judgment, or do they rely against evidence on whatever the authority figure tells them?

Thinking about it, though, from an evolutionary pov, it kind of makes sense to obey the authority figure. As social animals, early humans would probably live as a group with a distinct leader, much like chimpanzees. The leader would be one of the most experienced and capable individuals in the group, and in an emergency, would be able to direct the others to safety — provided they obey him.
Thus, obedient individuals (as well as leader types, of course) would have a greater chance of survival than those that would go against orders and do what they thought best.
That might explain why so many people felt the need to obey authority… it’s still creepy, though.

By: gary

gary — Sat, 23 May 2009 20:58:24 +0000

This reminds me of when Derren made a young girl kill a kitten. I vaguely remember the Milgram experiement being referenced in that episode, but I could be mistaken. This video and the kitten video are different things, as far as I can tell, but the “authority figure” was central to both scenarios.

(Derren, was the Rubik’s Cube used to create a sense of urgency and desperation?)

By: Victoria

Victoria — Sat, 23 May 2009 20:11:24 +0000

Everytime I\’ve watched The Heist I\’ve wondered why the volunteers happily kept (albeit unreal) administering potentially fatal shocks to someone however I\’ve since come up with a theory which is that perhaps the volunteers simply didn\’t realise how harmful the electric shocks they were administering could be.

Could this be a possibility or am I just having a blonde moment and not thinking of any situation where a person is under orders from an authoritative figure?