A team of researchers from Poland remade the Milgram experiment to test the modern social consciousness that resulted after years of democracy.
One of the widely known psychology experiment was recently reenacted. The results were far from signaling a safer world from the time fascism used to shape countries and citizens. This is about the Milgram experiment and its precision in measuring people’s willingness to obey authority despite personal moral values. The father of this method was Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University.
Milgram Experiment Discovers Whether People Follow Orders or Their Consciousness
Back in July 1961, Stanley Milgram was preparing a psychology experiment that would mark his name in history forever. Through this endeavor, Milgram wanted to answer a popular question in a time of fascism. Was it possible that the authors of the terrifying nature of Holocaust were just following orders? The experiment managed to answer affirmatively to this question. It seems that the psychological nature of humans revokes any material of consciousness when people receive orders from a higher authority.
As of recently, a group of scientists from SWSP University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Poland wanted to take the pulse of the current modern society. After so many years of democracy, the nations seem to have reached a stronger psychological consciousness. Researchers tested for the first time in history the level of obedience in Central Europe.
90% of Participants Applied Pain to a Stranger if Ordered So
The Milgram experiment is based on participants and accomplices. People are invited to a study, but they don’t know what it is about. The experiment wants to observe if certain conditions of pressure are enough for a person to apply electric shocks to a stranger. The interviewer encourages participants to harm a person they see for the first time. Thus, the exercise tests the willingness of people to torture a person just to satisfy a higher authority. While the accomplices suffer no harm, they do fake it in a credible way.
The remake of the experiment invited 80 participants, half of them being men while the others women. The age range was between 18 and 69. They were presented with a board of 10 buttons. Each of them was capable of a higher wave of a shock than its predecessor. Unfortunately, the results of the modern study are similar to the ones from the original Milgram experiment.
The new study noticed that 90% of people accepted to apply the highest level of shock to the stranger in front of them at the pressure of authority. However, when the accomplice was a woman, there were three times fewer people who refused to conduct the orders. On the other hand, researchers say that the small proportions of the study are not enough to mark this observation as universally valid.
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