The Milgram Experiment - Could It Happen Again?
The Situationist has an excellent post about a researcher who replicated the Milgram Experiments from nearly 50 years ago. His findings? You may or may not be surprised depending on your level of cynicism...
The Situationist - Students commonly assume that, even if Milgram’s famous experiment sheds important light on the power of situation today, were his experiment precisely reproduced today, it would not generate comparable results. To oversimplify the argument behind that claim: The power of white lab coats just ain’t what it used to be. Of course, that assertion has been difficult to challenge given that the option of replicating the Milgram experiment has been presumptively unavailable — indeed, it has been the paradigmatic example of why psychology experiments must be reviewed by institutional review boards (”IRBs”).
Who would even attempt to challenge that presumption? The answer: Jerry Burger, a psychology professor at Santa Clara University. With some slight modifications, Burger manage to obtain permission to replicate Milgram’s experiment — and the results may surprise you.
Below you can watch a video containing the ABC Primetime News story on Milgram original experiment and Burger’s replication of Milgram. Below that, you can read Burger’s first-hand account, from the December edition of the Observer, of how he managed this impressive feat. Finally, we’ve included a news story from this week suggesting the relevance of the Milgram’s findings for real-life.
The Situationist
1 comment:
So the experiment replicated Milgram.
The question greatest in my mind is what sort of ad was used in the replication. Some of the critics of the study say that a few key words in the participant advertisement may have skewed the results to cause participants to be tempermentally atypical of the general population towards authoritarian personalities.
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