爱华网A few years ago, in one of the most fascinating and disturbingexperiments in behavioural psychology, Stanley Milgram of YaleUniversity tested 40 subjects from all walks oflife for their willingness to obey instructions given by a'leader' in a situation in which the subjects might feel apersonal distaste for the actions they were called upon toperform. Specifically, Milgram told each volunteer'teacher-subject' that the experiment was in the noblecause of education, and was designed to test whether ornot punishing pupils for their mistakes would have a positiveeffect on the pupils' ability to learn.
Milgram's experimental set-up involved placing theteacher-subject before a panel of thirty switches with labelsranging from '15 vols of electricity (slight shock)' to '450 volts(danger - severe shock)' in steps of 15 voltseach. The teacher-subject was told that whenever the pupilgave the wrong answer to a question, a shock was to beadministered, beginning at the lowest level and increasingin severity with each successive wrong answer. Thesupposed 'pupil' was in reality an actor hired byMilgram to simulate receiving the shocks byemitting a spectrum of groans, screams and writhings together withan assortment of statements and expletives denouncing both theexperiment and the experimenter. Milgram told the teacher-subjectto ignore the reactions of the pupil, and toadminister whatever level of shock was called for, as perthe rule governing the experimental situation ofthe moment.
As the experiment unfolded, the pupil would deliberately givethe wrong answers to questions posed by the teacher, therebybringing on various electrical punishments, even up to the dangerlevel of 300 volts and beyond. Many of the teacher-subjectsbalked at administering the higher levels ofpunishment, and turned to Milgram with questioning looks and/orcomplaints about continuing the experiment. In these situations,Milgram calmly explained that the teacher-subject was to ignore thepupil's cries for mercy and carry on with the experiment. If thesubject was still reluctant to proceed, Milgram said thatit was important for the sake of the experiment that theprocedure be followed through to the end. His finalargument was, 'You have no other choice. You must go on.' WhatMilgram was trying to discover was the number of teacher-subjectswho would be willing to administer the highest levels of shock,even in the face of strong personal and moralrevulsion against the rules and conditions of theexperiment.
Prior to carrying out the experiment, Milgramexplained his idea to a group of 39 psychiatrists and asked them topredict the average percentage of people in an ordinary populationwho would be willing to administer the highest shock level of 450volts. The overwhelming consensus was thatvirtually all the teacher-subjects would refuse to obey theexperimenter. They psychiatrists felt that 'most subjects would notgo beyond 150 volts' and they further anticipated that only fourper cent would go up to 300 volts. Furthermore, they thought thatonly a lunatic fringe of about one in 1,000 wouldgive the highest shock of 450 volts.
What were the actual results? Well, over 60 percent of the teacher-subjects continued to obey Milgram up to the450-volt limit! In repetitions of the experiment in othercountries, the percentage of obedientteacher-subjects was even higher, reaching 85 per cent in onecountry. How can we possible account for this vastdiscrepancy between what calm, rational, knowledgeable peoplepredict in the comfort of their study and what pressured,flustered, but cooperative 'teachers' actually do in the laboratoryof real life?
One's first inclination might be to argue that there must besome sort of built-in animal aggression instinct that wasactivated by the experiment, and the Milgram'steacher-subjects were just following a genetic need todischarge this pent-up primal urge onto the pupil by administeringthe electrical shock. A modern hard-core sociobiologistmight even go so far as to claim that this aggressiveinstinct evolved as an advantageous trait, having been ofsurvival value to our ancestors in their struggle against thehardships of life on the plains and in the caves, ultimatelyfinding its way into our genetic make-up as aremnant of our ancient animal ways.
An alternative to this notion of genetic programming is to seethe teacher-subjects' actions as a result of the socialenvironment under which the experiment was carried out. AsMilgram himself pointed out, 'Most subjects in the experiment seetheir behaviour in a larger context that is benevolent and usefulto society - the pursuit of scientific truth. Thepsychological laboratory has a strong claim to legitimacy andevokes trust and confidence in those who perform there. Anaction such as shocking a victim, which in isolation appears evil,acquires a completely different meaning when placed in thissetting'.
Thus, in this explanation the subject merges his uniquepersonality and personal and moral code with that of largerinstitutional structures, surrendering individual properties likeloyalty, self-sacrifice and discipline to the service of malevolentsystems of authority.
Here we have two radically different explanations forwhy so many teacher-subjects were willing to forgo theirsense of personal responsibility for the sake of an institutionalauthority figure. The problem for biologists,psychologists and anthropologists is to sort out which of these twopolar explanations is more plausible. This, inessence, is the problem of modern sociobiology - to discover thedegree to which hard-wired genetic programmingdictates, or at least strongly biases, the interaction of animalsand humans with their environment, that is, their behaviour. Putanother way, sociobiology is concerned with elucidating thebiological basis of all behaviour.
