Philip Zimbardo:
Since I was little, I always believed in the power of the situation to shape people, for better or for worse. My experiment is like a Greek tragedy: what happens if you put good people in an evil place? Do good people dominate and change the evil of the place, or does bad place corrupt even the good? Milgram's experiment, which preceded mine, had to do with the power of the situation, but with a strong authority that put pressure on someone to hurt another person.
Eduard Punset:
Let's remind viewers a little bit about the essence of Milgram's experiment ...
Philip Zimbardo:
Sure. In the Milgram experiment, a very significant number of people, some 1,000, participated in the United States, with ages between 20 and 50 years. They were not students, but ordinary citizens. Mostly men. To summarize, the experimenter told participants: "we want to help improve people's memory. We will do it in the following way: you will be the teacher and he will be the apprentice, and when he does something right, perfect; but, when he makes a mistake, you will apply electric shocks, because we want to see if this improves learning." Everything started with a good ideology: that science wanted to help improve memory, so the participants believed that they were doing something good. There was a device with switches to activate the discharges, and the first one supposedly applied (because the apprentice was actually an actor) was 15 volts. From there, each increase was 15 volts: 15, 30, 45 ... but suddenly, when it reached 100, the actor began to shout from the other room: "I leave, I can not anymore"... If the participant was good, he turned to the experimenter and said: "Sir, who will be responsible if something happens?" The answer was: "I take responsibility, I am the expert, you have to continue". And now it was 100, 200 volts ... The other one was screaming and shouting ... And so on up to 450 volts, the maximum.
Eduard Punset:
Enough to kill someone, nearly.
Philip Zimbardo:
Well, at least to knock him out. When they reached 375, there was a scream and then silence. And the participant said: "Sir, something is wrong". But it was answered: "You have to continue". Milgram asked forty psychiatrists what percentage of US citizens believed they would apply 450 volts. His answer was that 1%, only sadists. However, they were wrong. Two out of every three people made it to the end! Even if the other shrieked, even if he said, "I want to leave, I have heart problems!" This is called blind obedience to authority. The experiment showed that, from a young age, we are taught to obey authority. And normally the authority is good: the parents, the priest, the rabbi ... but we do not know what to do when someone good becomes bad: when a teacher is cruel to the students, or a father abuses his children ... And Milgram showed that the most people could easily cross the line between good and evil, with good intentions, and say, "I'm helping this person", but they helped him by killing him.
http://www.redesparalaciencia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/entrev54.pdf
