Re: Frankey Jones & Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority

["Alan Young" <alanyoung@mchsi.com>]

Hi Bill and all,

There is a wonderful video, part of the Dscovering Psychology series, called
The Power of the Situation which shows this phenomenom clearly and
powerfully. It includes video footage of the Milgram and other studies
(Nazis, etc.) on how situations can influence people for bad but also for
good. It has been a wonderful tool in my teaching arsenal for 6th graders
through college students in demonstrating the powerful effects of social
contexts on human decision-making. Interestingly enough, this little video
can be used very effectively to open the eyes of well-meaning but very naive
folks in terms of why they do the things they do. It would be a helpful tool
in this fight and I applaud Bill for bringing it to our attention.

Alan

----- Original Message -----
From: "William Cala" <wcala@rochester.rr.com>
To: <arn-l@interversity.org>; <Wildyears3@aol.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003 10:51 AM
Subject: [arn-l] Frankey Jones & Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority


Stanley Milgram was a social psychologist with a Ph.D. from Harvard and
later taught at Yale.  His award-winning book of 1974, Obedience to
Authority resonates today.  Please note the following excerpt from a UK
Social Psych. site:

      Stanley Milgram's studies on obedience, conducted in the late 1950s
are among the most dramatic and unnerving of all Psychology studies. Milgram
was interested in how far people would go in following the orders of a
person in authority. In his studies, a naive subject (the 'teacher') was led
to believe that he was delivering increasingly powerful shocks to a
middle-aged man (the 'learner') with a heart condition in another room.
      At some point in the study, the learner began to complain of heart
problems, and to demand that the shocks stop. Each time the teacher tried to
stop, the experimenter would insist that the experiment go on. To everyone's
surprise, over 60% of all subjects followed the experimenter's commands to
go on, even after the learner ceased responding entirely.

      Although it is sometimes suggested that the same results would not be
obtained today, or with other populations - e.g., women. Remarkably however,
similar results were obtained in the Netherlands in 1986, with female nurses
as subjects. Some things never change.....

      I have repeatedly wondered why so many people (administrators,
teachers etc.) while speaking one-on-one clearly understand and are able to
articulate the damage of HST, yet when told to administer them, take them
etc., they follow like sheep being led to the slaughter.    On Friday, I
spoke with a fellow resisting superintendent from Nassau County in Long
Island.  He said, "Bill, they've all given up down here.  They
(superintendents) are now trying to raise test scores."

      When I read of the rare exceptions like Frankey Jones and James Hope
(and the heroes on this list) I cannot help but think of Milgram's Theory of
Obedience and why we are in the mess that we find ourselves with HST.

      "The theory that only those on the sadistic fringe of society would
submit to such cruelty is disclaimed."    "....Milgram has noted reoccurring
themes (as found in Obdenience to Authority)."  (He details the My Lai
massacre in Vietnam).  But the studies do not deal with extreme situations
such as war.

      "People who are doing a job as instructed by an administrative figure
are following the instructions of that administrative outlook and not the
outlook of a moral code. The feelings of duty and personal emotion are
clearly separated. Responsibility shifts in the mind of the subordinate from
himself/herself to the authority figure. There is a well defined purpose
behind the actions or goals of the authority, and the subordinate is
depended upon to help and meet those goals. Milgram points out, "The
results, as seen and felt in the laboratory, are to this author disturbing.
They raise the possibility that human nature, or -more specifically-the kind
of character produced in American society, cannot be counted on to insulate
the citizens from brutality and inhumane treatment at the direction of
malevolent authority."

      Milgram speaks of a "malevolent authority."  What would administrators
and teachers do under the pressure of a "benevolent authority?"  Milgram's
studies show that 65% of all the "teachers" punished the "learners" to the
maximum of 450 volts.

      I find Milgram's use of "teacher" and "learner" frigteningly
analogous.

      "According to Milgram, every human has the dual capacity to function
as an individual exercising his or her own moral judgement and the capacity
to make their own moral decisions based on their personal character. What is
still a mystery is this, what happens to the average person who is obedient
to authority when it overrides their own moral judgement?"

      We must continue the fight and support the Frankey Joneses of the
world.

      Bill Cala (in total admiration of Frankey Jones and what she has done)