PSYC 215 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Milgram Experiment, Demand Characteristics
Document Summary
Psychiatrists and lay people did not predict anywhere near this amount of obedience. Nazi trials at the time revealed only following orders excuse: american observers assumed such obedience could never happen in the us. Even social psychologists, who were interested in the power of social situations, did not fully predict this: Some researchers thought you could learn all you needed to know by asking people what they should do. Eliot aronson, influential researcher, thought milgran might find that more people obeyed that none would expect, but was still amazed by results. Even observers, who saw the whole set up, were ashamed by both the level of obedience an the distress that it caused. One observer related: i observed a mature and initially poised businessman enter the laboratory smiling and confident. Within 20 minutes, he was reduced to a twitching, stuttering wreck, ** . Milgram, who had not anticipated the degree of stress, interpreted it this way:
