Submitted by Timothy J Melody on Sun, 12/21/2008 - 16:39
This week it was announced that researchers at Santa Clara University of California replicated a 1961 experiment where volunteers were ordered to press a button that delivered increasing amounts of electric volts to an actor in another room. The hitch to the experiment was that the volunteers pushing the buttons could indeed hear the increasing cries of agony coming from the actor in the other room as they delivered the increasing volts. In the 1961 experiment, overwhelmingly participants did not stop delivering electric shocks, despite the fact that they were aware of how increasingly powerful they became and despite the increasingly agonized cries, but had to be stopped. That is, told to stop. The experiment seemed to show that most people would listen to authority rather than their own sense or ethics or morality.
The 1961 experiment was obviously controversial and was never replicated until now. Some argued that people in 1961 (e.g. pre the postmodern deconstruction) were more prone to listen to authority. i.e. it was a time era thing. But the recent replication shows otherwise. Roughly 70% of those who participated in the experiment continued to deliver the increasing electric shocks despite the cries of agony and despite the fact that they knew they were causing tremendous pain, just as in the first experiment. Once again, 70% of the participants had to be stopped by the experimenters. While some 30% or less . . . said, enough is enough, I'm not doing this anymore, I don't care what your research is, you know what? F you, etc.
It is interesting indeed how in align this study's statistic is with composite statistics from developmental psychology. That is, as Ken Wilber once said, that 70% of the world are Nazis. Or 70% of the world remains still at the amber stage of development. Indeed, the amber stage and obedience to authority are synonymous. It also historically has no bones about incredible torture. The study and it's nearly 50 year gap may also show something else: these stages aren't going anywhere. Everyone starts at square one and must develop from there. Even though in the future we might see that number decrease and the 30% increase, even that 30% or more, had to develop through the amber stage.
Certainly I don't believe these similarities are conclusive correlations of a similar pattern, but it's also not hard to see that correlation . . .
What do you think? What do things like this mean from an Integral perspective?
PS: a note. That 70%, mind you, was not without feeling. One of the reasons the experiment was never replicated was because it caused major distress in the volunteers -thus raising ethical concerns for the experimenters. But that in itself make the result even more interesting. They were not sociopaths or sadists, they didn't want to do it, didn't enjoy it. It in fact traumatized them. But still, they did what they were told . . .
