The Experiment

The above video is a BBC production for a documentary called 'How violent are you?' They use the Milgram experiment to test normal people's obedience to authority. Will they continue to inflict pain on another individual just because the scientist tells them too? In the original Milgram experiment over 65% of people did! Does this show a dark side to humans?

Milgram summarised the experiment in his 1974 article, "The Perils of Obedience", writing:

The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority^.

 This scares me a lot! It shows that some people are not strong enough to go against authority even when they know the authority is wrong. Another experiment is 'The Stanford Prison Experiment' which is depicted in the 2010 film 'The Experiment.' It is extremely disturbing and shows how normal people given authority can turn sadistic and cause psychological damage to others.

Soooo all this leads me to the conclusion...all humans know what is right or wrong but can easily be influenced by wrong people. Muslims should stay close to their religion and what they believe in. The Qu'ran clearly gives sets of rules to live by peacefully. Prayer keeps your mind clean and serene.

A scary world we live in!