The Dark Side
Back in the 1960s a Yale psychologist named Stanley Milgram began an experiment on memory. In one room he hooked a subject (the learner) up to an electroshock device and in the other room he sat the subject (the teacher) in front of a device that could shock the learner in 15 volt increments up to 450 volts. The teacher then asked the learner a series of questions and if learner got any wrong the teacher was instructed to administer shocks in increasing voltages. When the voltage got to a certain level, the learner would complain that it was too much and eventually go silent altogether. The teacher was instructed to continue.
You, of course, would be relieved to know that the learner was in on the experiment. It wasn’t an experiment in memory at all, and the learner’s electroshock machine was phony. Rather, it was an experiment to see how people responded to orders, even when they had nothing to lose. But don’t get too attached to your sense of relief because over 60% of participants went all the way to 450 volts. Feel free to scour YouTube for videos and Wikipedia for details.
It has been replicated since—though usually to lesser degree—and shown similar results. One such replication occurred quite recently on a faux French TV game show. You can see for yourself: click for video.
64 of the 80 teachers completed the test. 80%. What’s worse is that there was a crowd present cheering on the participant. Not only is one person capable of going all the way, but a crowd could actually enjoy it.
And so, given the pressure of real life, just what are we capable of as humans? Do we believe that people are basically good? Granted most of the participants felt horrible about what they had done, but I don’t think their bad feelings were some sort of remorse about their actions. I think it was much deeper. I think they were horrified at themselves. Very few people are given the chance to face their dark side.
And it’s this dark side of humanity that interests me. That not only can we be pushed to do horrible things, but that we can get caught up in the excitement of it. We have our excuses, we have our theories (“Well, I would never do that!”), and we have our hopes, but at the end of the day we have a much bigger scale version of a real life incident. This experiment proves that the Holocaust is repeatable. On a micro-level it shows what we as individuals are capable of. It shows that we have a nasty bit of us that will simply follow orders or get caught up in the moment. On a macro-level it shows that that nasty bit of us is very accessible and exploitable.
And I don't think it's just accessible and exploitable in the way the Holocaust was. Nazi Germany was a vision of Orwell's totalitarian 1984 future. But I think the real risk is in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World where people are controlled by entertainment. This game show proves that our dark side is easily tapped by our desire for fulfillment and pleasure and today's media can provide that.
Simply believing the right thing is not enough, though it is a good start. And it is not enough to simply go about life being “good.” One must counteract the dark side. One must do good: make the right choices, treat their fellow man and woman with respect (for if we all have this potential in us, then no one person is better than another), help those who can’t help themselves, give even if it hurts. I know what I think these things look like when we practice them. What do you think they look like?
But it's not just how we govern ourselves, but how we let others govern us. Surely you've heard the political one-liners Thoreau's "The best government is that which governs least" and another favorite of mine attributed to Jefferson "When people fear their governments there is tyranny; when governments fear the people there is liberty."
While these quotes are unhealthy in their extremes, I do think there is something to them that rings true. That we can avoid having our dark side exploited if we are aware that we have one and that it easily manipulated. And with that awareness, the choices we make in our political and world views would likely be a bit more conservative. Who we give power to and how much we give matters.
You, of course, would be relieved to know that the learner was in on the experiment. It wasn’t an experiment in memory at all, and the learner’s electroshock machine was phony. Rather, it was an experiment to see how people responded to orders, even when they had nothing to lose. But don’t get too attached to your sense of relief because over 60% of participants went all the way to 450 volts. Feel free to scour YouTube for videos and Wikipedia for details.
It has been replicated since—though usually to lesser degree—and shown similar results. One such replication occurred quite recently on a faux French TV game show. You can see for yourself: click for video.
64 of the 80 teachers completed the test. 80%. What’s worse is that there was a crowd present cheering on the participant. Not only is one person capable of going all the way, but a crowd could actually enjoy it.
And so, given the pressure of real life, just what are we capable of as humans? Do we believe that people are basically good? Granted most of the participants felt horrible about what they had done, but I don’t think their bad feelings were some sort of remorse about their actions. I think it was much deeper. I think they were horrified at themselves. Very few people are given the chance to face their dark side.
And it’s this dark side of humanity that interests me. That not only can we be pushed to do horrible things, but that we can get caught up in the excitement of it. We have our excuses, we have our theories (“Well, I would never do that!”), and we have our hopes, but at the end of the day we have a much bigger scale version of a real life incident. This experiment proves that the Holocaust is repeatable. On a micro-level it shows what we as individuals are capable of. It shows that we have a nasty bit of us that will simply follow orders or get caught up in the moment. On a macro-level it shows that that nasty bit of us is very accessible and exploitable.
And I don't think it's just accessible and exploitable in the way the Holocaust was. Nazi Germany was a vision of Orwell's totalitarian 1984 future. But I think the real risk is in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World where people are controlled by entertainment. This game show proves that our dark side is easily tapped by our desire for fulfillment and pleasure and today's media can provide that.
Simply believing the right thing is not enough, though it is a good start. And it is not enough to simply go about life being “good.” One must counteract the dark side. One must do good: make the right choices, treat their fellow man and woman with respect (for if we all have this potential in us, then no one person is better than another), help those who can’t help themselves, give even if it hurts. I know what I think these things look like when we practice them. What do you think they look like?
But it's not just how we govern ourselves, but how we let others govern us. Surely you've heard the political one-liners Thoreau's "The best government is that which governs least" and another favorite of mine attributed to Jefferson "When people fear their governments there is tyranny; when governments fear the people there is liberty."
While these quotes are unhealthy in their extremes, I do think there is something to them that rings true. That we can avoid having our dark side exploited if we are aware that we have one and that it easily manipulated. And with that awareness, the choices we make in our political and world views would likely be a bit more conservative. Who we give power to and how much we give matters.
You should have a look at Zimbardo's Stanford Prison study in 1971 (I think). It is astounding how much normal, everyday citizens conformed to what they thought their behaviour should be in a prison situation.
I enjoyed reading your post :)
Laura .x.
Thanks for reading!
I came across your blog pressing the "next blog" button above our blog and found it very interesting - in comparison to other blogs deepgoing - and treating important issues like: How come that PEOPLE can behave worse than beasts towards fellow people! I am German and here in Germany a very interesting film was broadcasted referring to this topic: Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel and with super actors like Moritz Bleibtreu made the film real special. It is called "Das Experiment (The Experiment)". I truly recommend to watch it. Just "google" the title and you will find further background informatio about it.
Another eyeopening experiment they did once ago was in an elementary school: The teacher divided the class into two groups: One group was the GOOD one - everybody who had blue eyes belonged to this group. The second one was the inferiero/BAD group, all kids with eye-coulors except blue were in it. And the result of this experiment you can naturally imagine yourself...
Cheers,
Sabine
Thanks for the reply! It's always good to have readers with interesting and useful information.
It's also good to hear these perspectives from a German, as Europe has been very influential to Sociology. And I'm also a big fan of German sociologists Max Weber and Jurgen Habermas.
Das Experiment is based on the Zimbardo Prison Experiment, a real life Standford study in which participants were either prisoner or guard. In spite of no physical trauma taking place the 14-day experiment was stopped after only 6 days. It looks like Das Experiment is a dramatization of that, and I'd very much like to see it.
The other experiment you mentioned is called A Class Divided (and is available for viewing on PBS' website). It was conducted by teacher Jane Elliott. The results give researchers mounds of information from different perspectives. On one hand, we learn a lot about racism from this experiment, but we also learn a lot about how kids learn. One week she said blue eyes were good and brown eyes were bad, but she actually reversed it the next week. The first week the blue eyed kids performed better on tests than the brown eyed kids. The next week (when it was switched) the brown eyed kids performed better than the blue eyed kids on the SAME tests.
Thanks again, always