Thirty years ago, they were wide-eyed, first-year graduate students, ordered by their iconoclastic professor, Dr. Stanley Milgram, to venture into the New York City subway to conduct an unusual experiment.
Their assignment: to board a crowded train and ask someone for a seat. Then do it again. And again.
"As a Bronxite, I knew, you don't do this," said Dr. Jacqueline Williams, now an assistant dean at Brooklyn College. Students jokingly asked their professor if he wanted to get them killed.
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Probing Social Rules
or how to become ill without being sick.
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3 comments:
Milgram's work on administering shocks was a landmark piece of work and should be knows by all: (you too could be a Nazi. In fact, well, you are, you just haven't been exposed.)
This one is Freudian (Freud blamed everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, on sex and mom: totally off the wall! and you can still get a degree in Freudian Psychoanalysis... would these people be pro-Bush?) , badly based: it really involves cheating, deception, and fear of exposure, and that WILL get you killed. People who need a seat ask for it and get it. People who are seen to need a seat, well, one will be volunteered.
Shit. Pole huggers, door guarders? Somebody is fishing for a grant.
You don't have to get on a subway to conduct this experiment: deliberately behave in an antisocial way* anyplace you happen to be, or at least try to: you can't :-)
*shout, fart intentionally at someone, put your hand inside your pants, ask someone to look at your body and ask if there is a sore there. Or just tell someone you are starving and need money, really.
Hey, I ride the subways. Boston, Washington, NY City... people give up their seats all the time! Actually, I recall some young kid offering ME a seat, as I had a passel of luggage on my old and sorry ass (I forget that from the outside, I look just like any other old fart)
The Milgram thing WAS deception! The people asking did NOT need the seat. That was a terrible terrible lie. That was a severe tearing of the social fabric, to fake need.
I have been approached by people who game the system just that way, claiming they just lost their wallet, NEED a buck just to get a bus ticket, would NEVER ever do such a thing, but are in DIRE need: THAT person, AND the person who asks for a seat and has no need: THAT is destructive.
The other experiment was far far from being deceptive: It was delivering a real response without actually hurting someone, just like in the movied: "No animal was injured during the creation..." It would be kind of hard to get and keep subject who were actually shocked to death for their participation.
Geez!
Sorry, Charlie: Milgram was trying to determine how people might act. Yes, of course the student in the experiment is being observed: it's a blind test (not a double blind)... no different that giving a placebo.
As to asking to give up the seat, there is simple NO reason to be upset and turn white if you haven't an agenda!
Asking for the seat carries the implication that you need it.
We actually had a joke like that: we'd say, hey, gimmer a dollar. And the friend would and we'd say "thanks"! And they guy would say "Wha? I thought you needed it."
Nope, I didn't say I needed it, I just asked for it.
But the test is simple: you, go on bus, a subway, whatever, and ask for a seat. See what comes up for you. There is no godly reason to ask for a seat if you do not need one... and therein is the deception.
Geez. It has to come down to feelings.
I can simply feel the answers. If you can actually FEEL your answers, well, THAT would be interesting. There we would have one hellua impass, and that would be worth exploring.
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