THE MILGRAM EXPERIMENT

Unit 8Deviance and Crime

What is deviance?

Deviance describes actions or behaviors that violate cultural norms.

Can anyone be deviant? Could you be deviant? How many of you would voluntarily hurt

someone? Raise your hand Most people don't admit to wanting to hurt

others -at least not openly. That's a pretty deviant behavior.

Are you familiar with a Taser?

A Taser is an electroshock weapon that uses electrical current to disrupt voluntary control of muscles. Created and marketed by Taser International, the name "Taser" is both a brand and a registered trademark of Taser International.[1]

Its a weapon that shocks and paralyzes people. It DOES hurt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSYlxzCHvKg

Taser questionairre

Tally the Results!

Are you surprised? What can you learn about human behavior

from this survey? How many were sadistic – interested in hurting

others (from the Marquis de Sade - a historically cruel figure)

How many were masochistic – hurting self Many of us have hidden deviant behaviors

(like hurting others, or selves) hidden beneath us, that don’t come out much Many of us are deviant (or could be)

Now to up the ante…

Do you think you would kill someone if you were told to do it?

These last activities show a little bit of what we are capable of, but obviously many in the past have been capable of much, much more. Notably: the Nazis and the Holocaust

The atrocities were so horrendous that they were deemed “crimes against humanity” Where were the Nazi leaders (the surviving ones) tried?

Nuremburg There was one rule at Nuremburg – individual responsibility

From soldiers to Generals – they were forced to admit responsibility and could not say “I was following orders”

The Milgram Experiment

One psychologist, a Jewish man named Milgram, decided to explore how the Nazis were capable of doing such a horrible thing.

He decided to do a study to prove that the German people were different. One hypothesis was that without as much of a democratic tradition as the US and with a healthy respect for efficiency and authority Germans were capable of following orders, even terrible ones. Milgram was going to test the idea that the German people were different, and that explained how they could follow a madman like Hitler to his ends.

Reading: “If Hitler asked you to electrocute a stranger, would you? Probably”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCVlI-_4GZQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnYUl6wlBF4

Discuss Were the experiment subjects bad people if

they shocked the person (especially to "death")?

Would YOU have acted how most of the experimenters did (shocking to outrageous levels)? (before knowing what you do)

Was Milgrim a bad person for running these experiments?

Should these experiments have been done? Do you think they are similar to WWYD episodes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSveKV8Tk3s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fArp6WoWmo