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Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Milgram Studies Revisited

Today is a revisit from a past post in which we discussed the Milgram studies. This re post is due in part to an assignment I had in class and just how fascinated I am with the fact that we as humans follow orders from Authority. That authority can be a person, an institution, a country, or even an idea. Recently the Milgram studies were replicated by burger in 2009. There are three youtube videos showing the experiment with the actual participants being filmed. It is fascinating and scary to watch. Here are the links:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

These videos show that even today in our "highly sophisticated" society we are still going to conform to what we are told to do. I think a really good exercise to do on this is to do some more people watching, but this time pay attention to what they do when they don't think anyone is watching and when they do think someone is watching.

How do your characters behave when no one is watching?

Note I realized that my page on the giveaway is not accepting posts. I have tried to fix this but it is not allowing it. If you want to be in the contest just post below and put in the number of entries you deserve. Sorry about that I will continue working on it.

7 comments:

  1. most def...it creates plausible deniability...i was just doing what i was told to do...it keeps us from having to make decisions on our own as well...

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  2. I didn't realize that they had done this study again. It is really creepy to me that authority figures control that much power over our sense of morality. I wonder if there are any authoritative figures who don't realize how much power they hold over others. And if they think they are in the right, how much damage they could do. Creepy.

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  3. I agree with the comments the guy at the end made. You think of violence and other horrible acts as someone else, when in reality it could be any average person. Scary and disturbing.

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  4. I've never thought about how my characters act when others aren't watching. They just act. This is something I'm going to consciously think about from now on (though I have a feeling I was already doing that subconsciously).

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  5. Found you at The Golden Eagle.

    Great question. I've never thought about this either. Must change that . . .

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  6. Just found your blog through the Pay It Forward blogfest - Eagle's Aerie recommended you, and so glad she did! Interesting stuff - I'm your newest follower.

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  7. I love the idea of considering how characters behave when no one is watching. You've given me great food for thought with that simple question. Thanks!

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