Videosift keeps eating my long, detailed, informative post, so just go here instead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

interesting video ... questioning authority doesn't seem so bad now, does it?? do you want to be the one that nobody helps?

what this video did for me was to affirm that my current parenting mantra of raising children who exude confidence and self respect couldn't be more spot on.

Unfortunately no matter how much we may learn from the milgrim experiment, the fact is that in cases where it does matter, the utmost is done to attain people who are subservient to authority in the first place.

US Army training is like that, you have the psychological attunement to following orders, and for all the noise created by the Abu Grahib scandal, what response did you get from the administration? That it was a few bad apples. That is clearly a lie, the video shows that in order for people to do inhumane acts, the permission must be given from a higher authority. There is ample evidence showing that private military contractors were hired for information gathering, the soldiers from Abu Ghrabi always mentioned a plain clothed officials who would direct them, this is how Vietnam era torture techniques suddenly show up in Iraq because the soldiers there on the field where never trained for information gathering duties.

@Farhad2000: You're partially right, partially wrong. This experiment does NOT show that people NEED to be given permission from a higher authority in order for them to commit inhumane acts, it simply shows that WHEN people are commanded by a higher authority to follow orders and thus commit inhumane acts, they do so almost invariably.

That being said, I think it is clear that in cases like Abu Ghraib, the accused were certainly influenced to a large degree, if not outright instructed, by superiors and contractors to treat prisoners in inhumane ways.

I also agree with your statement that in cases where it matters most, there is a huge effort to keep people subservient to authority. Of course, an efficient army could not do with the chain of command, but this experiment clearly shows that a ranking officer must take responsibility if he orders his men to act in a certain way while these orders are clearly morally wrong. It is sickening to see superiors allow their soldiers to take the heat when really the soldiers believe they are simply following orders.

I'm still having trouble submitting my full writeup, but it should certainly be noted that the Milgram experiment was designed to see whether Adolf Eichmann of the Nazi SS actually had a valid argument or not when he made his defense that he was also "merely following orders". People may make their own conclusions, but the facts remain that:
1. The Holocaust occurred in part due to every single Nazi soldier involved allowing it to take place and participating in the process of genocide.
2. The Milgram experiment repeatedly demonstrated that 60%-65% of the test subjects would run the experiment to completion (meaning certain death for the patient), and around 90-93% would inflict potentially permanently-damaging or lethal shocks.
3. Eichmann was eventually found guilty and executed. His last words were: "Long live Germany. Long live Austria. Long live Argentina. These are the countries with which I have been most closely associated and I shall not forget them. I had to obey the rules of war and my flag. I am ready."

I think it's obvious that we can't really rely on our military or government to train our citizens and soldiers to question authority when necessary. That is not what the military or government wants, nor is it their job to train them to question authority. I would suggest that LadyBug and other parents with her mindset are perhaps our best defense against a second Holocaust or Abu Ghraib.

Some food for thought.

While it would be ill advised to train low rank troops on these issues of questioning orders, it's clear that the officer corp should integrate this into their curriculum for future conflicts. Not only on moral, ethical grounds but on grounds of sound military strategy and force loss reduction (a vital thing for an all volunteer force). Enough autonomy must be allowed to factor in the safety of deployed forces.

US intervention in Somalia, the Mogadishu incident is one example where military leaders conceded with a lack of forces and lack of information. Am sorry but its terrible when politics run military operations, any military strategist would have told you back then that Somalia is a country filled with militias that have been fighting a civil war for decades. Not factoring that vital piece of information cost 18 lives. Always know the lay of the land. Vietnam should have taught the administration and military that, but they came off too proud from successes of an air war in the Gulf War.

I say this because I frankly don't understand why the US army has to at times undertake duties not within their mission objectives on the ground, why previous plans for re-construction of Iraq are thrown out with nary of a protest (see Bob Woodward), disbanding the Iraq army created an unemployed army for hire. Or worse when they come under equipped into a combat zone they have been drilling for (See Red Flag & OPFOR engagements). War is seriously horrible business and should be taken as such. If you are going to do it. Do it properly, do it with minimal civilian losses (civilians are the eyes and ears in a guerrilla war), do it with minimal force loss, do it when it has the backing of the people. Because morale is affected by how a conflict is seen. This is why by the way there is no longer the raw Vietnam era style of reporting of conflict but embedded reporters.

[Understand that my comment applies to unilateral military engagements in a no-other option scenario]

I somehow very much doubt that this would have worked on a large city dwelling employee (New York, Los Angeles etc). And if same call was made, they woulda laughed or got mad instead of actually listening and carrying out the commands.

So I would think this has much to do with ignorance of being naive and inexperienced rather than simple obedience and not obeying authority.

In a way, readily believing whatever this documentary says is also somewhat naive in your own part. But yes, it's very hard to decipher what's theorized and what isn't, when the person suggesting the theory is a legitimate doctor/scientist. It doesn't mean they're always right. They're good at conducting experiments, but that doesn't mean that they're good at logic.

So in conclusion, relating this to the current events of Iraq and torture is somewhat farfetched in my opinion. There are better explainations for those events than this.

legacy0100, I would agree that comparing this to current events of Iraq and torture is somewhat (but not completely) inaccurate. However, you are quite wrong as to your first statement that participants in the Milgram experiment would not have completed the commands if they were from big cities. If you care to look up the backgrounds of participants in the original experiment, as well as repetitions of the experiment, you will find that, in fact, many participants WERE from large cities, and that many of them were NOT naive, nor were they inexperienced. Milgram made sure to get an excellent distribution of participants, ranging from a man who didn't even complete elementary school to a few Ph.D.s, with plenty of people falling in between these extremes. The wide range of backgrounds among the participants, and their near-complete compliance in every case, pretty much rules out the possibility of "large city dwelling employees" being immune to such a situation.

Believe me, every attempt to discredit Milgram and the results of his experiment was pretty much made after he published his findings, because everybody would like to think, oh, that wouldn't really happen if *I* were put in that situation. But nobody was ever in discrediting the experiment because the thing was pretty much airtight. Unethical or not, it was a brilliant experiment. And like it or not, Milgram's experiment revealed what I see as quite an ugly truth in the nature of mankind.

I really don't understand what you're trying to say in your second-to-last comment, "theory" really doesn't come into play here. The simple fact remains that basically each participant, had the shocks been real, would have participated in the murder of a fellow human being at the urging of an authority figure. That's what's so darn powerful about the results.

basically, it boils down to each person's self-respect and personal conviction. i can unequivocally say that i would have not made it very far in milgram's experiment.

we live in a mean-spirited, desensitized society ... i was actually asked to leave a patient's team meeting because i was too sympathetic towards the patient. being in a superior position is very important to some people and makes them very ugly.

*promote

Re-promoting this video to the front page as a VideoSift Classic. Originally published on Saturday 2nd December 2006 (promotion called by gold star member choggie)

Damn, finally figured out how to use this thing....There ya go rembar, remembar choggie, when he's bloody and unconscious, undergoin' shock treatment..(Finally the meds are delivered in a handy paper cup!)

The google link (http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=3268461451231957070&hl=en) isn't responding, anybody has a mirror?

seems *dead

The link to this video has been flagged as dead. Fix it within 7 days or it will be discarded (dead called by Gold Star member calvados)

Discarding this video. It was flagged as dead but not flagged undead within 7 days.