Now I’d like to believe that we have, as a society and because of what psychologists like Milgram have taught us, become less blind to the demands of authority. I’d like to believe that, but I don’t.
Dr Thomas Blass, Milgram’s biographer, recently asked himself that question."Would Milgram find less obedience if he conducted his experiments today? I doubt it. To go beyond speculation on this question, I gathered all of Milgram’s standard obedience experiments and the replications conducted by other researchers. The experiments spanned a 25-year period from 1961 to 1985.
"I did a correlational analysis relating each study’s year of publication and the amount of obedience it found. I found a zero-correlation – that is, no relationship whatsoever. In other words, on the average, the later studies found no more or less obedience than the ones conducted earlier."
[…]
Milgram once wrote that we are "puppets controlled by the strings of society". Yet what is also true is that not all puppets jump when their strings are pulled. Many of the fast-food managers who were rung up the "policeman" refused to follow his orders. In Milgram’s own experiment, although 65 per cent of the volunteers were prepared to give apparently lethal electric shocks, that still left 35 per cent who would not.
What no experimenter has yet been able to predict are the characteristics that mark out those who will rebel from the rest. The only way you will ever know how you measure up is when you find yourself tested. You have a one in three chance of passing.
Full article here: The uncomfortable truth about mind control: Is free will simply a myth? – Features, Health & Families – The Independent.
