Milgram re-visited

You are probably familiar with the Milgram experiment. In the experiment, participants (unaware of the nature of the experiment) were instructed to administer electric shocks to individuals (sitting in an adjoining room) even though the victims of the shocks were clearly in pain. The strength of the shocks were gradually increased (up to 450 volts), but many of the participants were still willing to go on with their task. The experiment has been interpreted to show that, confronted with an order by a person who, in some sense, is a symbol of authority, we will do things that would, in another situation, appear impossible for us to do. Many interpreters of the experiment have done much of the fact that the participants were relieved of all responsibility for their actions - the experimenters tried to convince them of that.

The Observer reports that a new version of the Milgram experiment has been conducted. Interestingly, it is the legitimacy of conducting this type of experiment that is focused on in the short article. (The original experiment was criticized for its unethical treatment of the participants of the experiment) Nothing is really said about why the researcher, Jerry Burger, is interested in reviewing the result of a new Milgram-type experiment. Is it his hypothesis that people are now less fooled by the authority of white coats and uniforms? That we are less prone to blind obedience? Burger claims, however: "Among other things, we found that today people obey the experimenter in this situation at about the same rate they did 45 years ago." Here's the link from The Observer.

Here is a comment on the original experiment by The Situationist's (a blog dedicated to social psychology), discussing the role of the situation vs. dispositions in connection with the Milgram example:

"The reason the experiment is famous is not because situation trumped disposition for some subjects while disposition trumped situation for others, but because seemingly trivial situational forces to inflict great pain on an innocent person overcame the obvious situational forces to do otherwise. It had been presumed by virtually everyone, including Milgram himself, that the latter situational forces would trump the former. But that presumption was wrong for the majority of subjects—and that prediction error makes clearhow easily situational forces can lead “good people” to behave more or less like “bad apples.”"

I don't know what to do with the idea that we must either say that people have an inherent disposition to act in a specific way ("an inherent tendency for sociopathic behaviour"), or that there are some "situational forces" at hand, determining our behaviour in some direction or other. The way I see it, such a dichotomy would rid our world of meaning, leaving room for mystical forces of situations and "dispositions" only. In his 3-part article on situational forces of evil (on the same blog), Philip Zimbardo writes:

"Motives and needs that ordinarily serve us well can lead us astray when they are aroused, amplified, or manipulated by situational forces that we fail to recognize as potent. This is why evil is so pervasive. Its temptation is just a small turn away, a slight detour on the path of life, a blur in our sideview mirror, leading to disaster."

Zimbardo is right that there are a thousand ways in which the language of authority and power is used to induce obedience. Abu Ghraib: how military ranks are turned into justifications. But I don't agree with him that evil is avoided simply by our thinking about what happens to us. Sure, sometimes self-deception is dissolved when we come to think more clearly about something. But usually, self-deception and the kind of obedience Milgram is interested in goes deeper than that.