Do you remember the Milgram experiment on obeying authority? According to the conditions of the experiment, the subjects (teachers) asked questions to other participants (students). For incorrect answers, the “teachers” shocked the “learners”.
The Experiment Requires That You Continue
— With this and similar phrases, the experimenter authoritatively was pushing the “teachers” if they were in doubt. And it was working.
Before the start of the experiment, the “teachers” were asked to test a light discharge of current on themselves so that they would understand how unpleasant would experience for the “learner”. In fact, it was the only real discharge. The conditions of the experiment were set up in such a way that the participants believed in the reality of what is happening. Subjects were told that the experiment was studying the effect of punishment on the ability to memorize. According to legend, the “learner” had to memorize pairs of words that the “teacher” read out.
There was an actor behind the wall, and his heart-rending scream of pain was just a recording that he played after another punishment for the wrong answer. The subjects heard the screams but did not see what was happening in the other room. Of course, the participants didn’t shock anyone. But they were ready to do so.
An unusual experiment, with its unexpected results, aroused genuine interest in society, so much so that a film was even made about it. The 2015 film The Experimenter starring Peter Sarsgaard and Winona Ryder. But it is unlikely that the Russian soldiers who are now sent by the Kremlin government to kill and die in Ukraine watched this film.
A 21-year-old Russian military serviceman, Vadim Shishimarin, shot and killed an unarmed civilian in Ukraine following orders. A Ukrainian court has sentenced the war criminal to life imprisonment. Shishimarin became the first Russian soldier to be tried in Ukraine.
Milgram was also spurred into psychological research by the trial of a war criminal. Stanley Milgram began his experiments in July 1961 in the basement of Yale’s Linsley-Chittenden Hall, three months after the start of the trial of German Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem.
The Yale University psychologist in his experiments wanted to find explanations for Nazi war crimes. Ukrainians are trying to find the same explanations regarding the wild crimes of Russians after their full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Instead of answering the causes of the Nazis’ crimes, the study raised even more questions. With his experiment, Milgram revealed a deeper problem of human social behavior. Why is a person ready to carry out orders or requests of an authority figure, regardless of his will, honor, and conscience? Like the Russian military Vadim Shishimarin, the German Nazi Adolf Eichmann, “just followed orders”… But such an answer can hardly be acceptable.
Why Do Authority Win Over Conscience and Common Sense?
Ukrainian generals claim that the backbone of the Russian army is young men, from remote regions of Russia, who have no higher education, but many of them have outstanding debts… You can doubt the mental capacity of a twenty-year-old Russian who killed an unarmed man on orders. And it is likely that your doubts will be confirmed. But the subjects of the 1961 experiment were not guys from the Russian backwoods.
People of different ages (from 20 to 50) and levels of education took part in the experiment. They were men with different professions. Therefore, we can conclude that the problem does not lie exclusively in the field of intelligence.
The problem is also not in the national mentality. The obedience shown by the Nazis was not due to the “distinct German character”, as Milgram thought before the experiment. The psychologist conducted his first experiment as a control with Americans. After receiving the first results, Milgram and a number of other psychologists carried out experiments in other countries, under other conditions, with people of other nationalities. The results of all experiments were about the same.
The results of the first series of Milgram's experiments:
- 65% (26 out of 40) of the participants in the experiment applied the strongest shock of 450 volts
- 100% applied a discharge of at least 300 volts.
- 14 out of 40 subjects showed clear signs of nervous laughter or smiling.
The participants were in obvious tense. Signs of stress were sweating, trembling, stuttering, biting lips, moaning and digging nails into the skin, nervous laughter, or convulsions.
Each time the participants asked the experimenter to stop, they received prepared responses such as “the experiment requires you to continue,” and they continued. At least most of them. Although some subjects nevertheless stopped participation and even declared their desire to return the money paid to them for participation. Despite the fact that the money for participation was paid to the subjects, regardless of the results of the experiment, about what they were notified.
Milgram put forward two theories as an answer to the question of why people are willing to obey authority:
- The theory of conformity, according to which, a person in a crisis, leaves decision-making to the group and its hierarchy.
- The theory of the agent state, in which a person considers himself as an instrument for fulfilling the desire of another person, without feeling responsible for his actions.
There are also alternative hypotheses like:
- Confidence in the opinion of an expert.
- The blurring of a unique personality as a result of merging with larger institutions such as science.
All hypotheses look quite plausible. But it is hardly possible to conclude that the listed theories can fully explain the psychology of Nazism or genocide, which was originally the purpose of the study.
The brutal crimes now being committed by Putin’s troops in Ukraine are quite comparable to the crimes of Hitler’s Nazis. Many countries have already officially recognized that Russia, through the hands of its military, is committing genocide against Ukrainians.
43 countries and the EU recognized the actions of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine as genocide of the Ukrainian people.
The genocide cannot be explained only by the low IQ of the criminals or the high level of obedience to their “fuhrers”. A combination of factors is at work here — from ideological convictions invested by propaganda and fear of not fulfilling an order, to greed for profit and violence. But can there be one single root cause for various negative manifestations of human behavior?
Root of Evil
Mindfulness works as life energy for good and as deadly energy for evil. Mindfulness works as a blessing for the good and as a curse for the bad. If you ask me what sin is, I will say this: what can be done with full awareness is not sin; that which cannot be done with awareness is sin.
OSHO
Is it possible for a conscious person to shock another just because a guy in a robe asks him to continue? Can a conscious person shoot an unarmed person on the orders of a commander? Or kill hundreds of women and children with one air bomb, as happened in the Mariupol Drama Theater?
The Milgram experiment once again emphasized the root cause of all the troubles and atrocities of mankind. The root is a lack of awareness.
In a chaotically woven web of interpersonal relations in society, the lack of awareness manifests itself as blind obedience to authority. A person can kill another person “just by following order” Lack of awareness can mean loss of humanity.
Milgram, in his 1974 article “The Perils of Obedience”, wrote:
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.
The problem is that there are not so many conscious people, as evidenced by the results of the experiment and the realities of wars. That is why experiments like Milgram’s are so important to open people’s eyes.
One of the participants in the experiment wrote to Milgram six months later. This was during the Vietnam War. In his letter, he explained how important the experience he gained during the experiment was:
While I was a subject in 1964, though I believed that I was hurting someone, I was totally unaware of why I was doing so. Few people ever realize when they are acting according to their own beliefs and when they are meekly submitting to authority … To permit myself to be drafted with the understanding that I am submitting to authority’s demand to do something very wrong would make me frightened of myself … I am fully prepared to go to jail if I am not granted Conscientious Objector status. Indeed, it is the only course I could take to be faithful to what I believe. My only hope is that members of my board act equally according to their conscience …