Milgram experiment participant who refused to administer shocks (2004)

What separates this from being an experiment vs. harrowing life experience?

Another Milgram study involved asking NYC subway passengers to give up their seat. The interesting part is when Dr. Milgram participated:

"Dismissing his students' fears, Dr. Milgram set out to try it himself. But when he approached his first seated passenger, he found himself frozen.

"The words seemed lodged in my trachea and would simply not emerge," he said in the interview.

Retreating, he berated himself: 'What kind of craven coward are you?"

A few unsuccessful tries later, he managed to choke out a request.

"Taking the man's seat, I was overwhelmed by the need to behave in a way that would justify my request," he said. "My head sank between my knees, and I could feel my face blanching. I was not role-playing. I actually felt as if I were going to perish."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/14/nyregion/14subway.html

This is more depressing than it looks like at first. His refusal to continue was foremost due to a badly designed experiment. I have a feeling if the Milgram experiment were done in a military or corporate setting in which subjects weren't aware of participating in an experiment, the results would be very different. Hell, even if you took undergraduates and "hired" them to man the shock experiments for a professor who was grading them, you'd get different results.

Too bad experimenting on people without telling them is illegal. Unless you do it on a TV show... hm...

Cool story, would have been more interesting if he had refused to continue even without figuring out the ruse.

"In retrospect, I believe that my upbringing in a socialist-oriented family steeped in a class struggle view of society taught me that authorities would often have a different view of right and wrong than mine."

Well, it didn't make my father-in-law independent. He was a leader in the fight against the Japanese, was shot and left for dead, but recovered thanks to a brilliant doctor. As a reward, after the war he was appointed photography editor of the PLA's offical newspaper. During the Cultural Revoultion, they threw him into a reeducation camp for supposedly making a joke about Mao. I wonder if the people who fed him his one egg a week cooked in used motor oil had any trouble obeying orders? After all, most of them were raised in "socialist-oriented families". What about the secret policemen in Cuba? What about Mussolini, whose father was a member of the Communist Internationale and whose famous son was first elected to parliment as a member fo the Socialist Party? Was that enough of a "socialist-oriented family"? Or the Hilter Youth of the National Socialist German Workers Party? The hangmen of the Ayatollah Khomeini's "Islamic Socialism", stringing up a fresh batch of gays? Mugabe's goons murdering political opponents in Zimbabwe? What about Danny Ortega's goons murdering Moskito Indians in Nicarauga -- any trouble following orders there? Saddam Hussain's Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party? Soviet soldiers starving 20 million Kulaks to death by withholding their grain and movement privileges (hello Wlater Duranty and the New York Times!)? The Cambodian language teacher turned Khmer Rouge prison director who meticulously corrected the confession of an inmate while the guards in the next room poured gasoline into her vagina and ignited it? Obiedient socialists all.

Speaking of social experiments, you don't often get a chance to control for nearly all variables when comparing outcomes among large groups of people. Compare East Germany to West, North Korea to South, Taiwan and Hong Kong versus China on the amount of "obiedience to authority". Same culture, language, history, geography, weather, genetics.

"This is not to say that membership in the Communist Party made me or anyone else totally independent."

Oh, he's quite wrong there. One last bit of history that you've never heard cuz it's just too darned trivial. A bit of background: Human feces is valuable to Chinese peasents, as they often use it as fertilizer. During the Great Leap Forward, my wife's cousin was found by the side of the road, several leaves in his hand wrapped around something. Puzzled, they opened it up to see what was inside. It was all he had left in the world. He was quite independent from that point on, as he and 77 million other Chinese never needed anything from anyone ever again.

Stalin once said that one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. But then, he and all the people who obeyed him would know, wouldn't they?