In thinking about the question of why do good people and good organizations do bad things, in this lesson we will review the question of obedience. Of why it is we often go along with authority when they think they're in charge and we can't do anything about it. [MUSIC] One of the questions the Volkswagen case raises is, why do people go along when they knew this was bad engineering? When they knew they were breaking the law? And one of the reasons that people go along so much is what's called obedience to authority. I'm the boss, you work for me, you'll go along with what I tell you. And by the way, that's also a worry in the classroom, too, just because we're professors doesn't mean we know everything. Just remember that, the other professors would be mad if I said that, but that's one of the problems. Ask questions, always ask questions. So let's look at this problem of obedience to authority. >> Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments. [MUSIC] Yale psychologists Stanley Milgram wonders why good German citizens went along with Nazis and the holocaust. When will good people follow and obey authority? [MUSIC] Milgram invites the public to volunteer, and claims that the study is a memory study even though it is really a study of obedience. Each volunteer is assigned a task as teacher. And an actor poses as the leaner, which is always a male. [MUSIC] Teacher observes learner strapped to a chair in another room room where he will get shocks. The task, teacher ask learner to match correct word pair, and if learner makes a mistake, he gets a shock. With each mistake, the learner gets a larger shock up to 450 volts. [MUSIC] A person of authority urges the teachers the experiment must go on, even though the teacher could stop at any time. At 120 volts, the learner began to moan, at 350 volts, he screamed. Then he became silent throughout the rest of the experiment. Note, the learner was an actor. He was never really shocked. [MUSIC] >> How many people would go along with this? Milgram tested 800 men and only 40 women. Now what percent of those teachers would shock a perfect stranger up to 450 volts who couldn't answer all the questions? And what about the women? I would like to say, of course, they were much nicer and gentler than the men. And was there anything to do with one's education, one's background, whether or not it was a healthcare physician or a nurse, anything like that that made a difference. Now, Milgram asked his colleagues, and his colleagues said that less than 1% of anyone who was a teacher would shock a perfect stranger up to 450 volts. And they also speculated that those who would go up to 450 volts were well educated, unemployed, abused as children, bad background, and so on and so on. However, this is the bad news. Imagine doing 840 of these, with each one the results were the same. 60% to 65% of the participants shocked the learner up to 450 volts. Worst, the women were the same. I personally have done a study of the women, they were at 60% to 65%. And there is no correlation between their background and those who went to 60%, 65%. Nurses up to 450 volts, [SOUND] it was just amazing. Awful, I thought it was awful. I'm still recovering from this because I was so shocked. And of course, I was shocked that women were just as bad as men. Now, so the question really was why does that happen? And here, of course, is it. And this what Milgram says, behavior that is unthinkable in an individual will be executed, will be done under orders. That we tend to learn to follow orders as children, and we tend to follow orders particularly with someone in authority, like Hitler. But this wasn't Hitler, this was just a guy who said I'm in a position of authority. And the experiment must go over. This ain't even someone in a uniform. It's just a white coat sort of thing. So it's fascinating, the study was fascinating. Now Milgram's conclusion is, most of us will do this. Most of us will go along. Most of us will follow authority. Even when there isn't, can't even find the reason for this. This was just during word pairs. Nothing was at stake here, and yet people went along. Now, this was in the 1960s, so you're all saying, well, that was a long time. That was really the olden days. I don't even know anybody that old, right? However, there have been a number of contemporary experiments that have produced the same kind of results. So where are we now? In 2010, a French documentary producer decided to recreate the Milgram experiments. So he created a TV show called Zone Xtreme, and he listed participants to come watch the show, be honest. And then some of them would be teacher contestants. And then, of course, he had actors as learners. And, of course, he had the word pair match and he did this on stage. So you could watch this. So every time the teacher gave the learner electric shock, you could see the learner on stage rioting, just having a terrible time. And guess what, the audience cheered. More crying, more cheering. About 70% of the teachers went all the way, this is only 420 volts, well all right, in front of a live audience. Now it turned out that this was a fake TV show that they never showed this thing, Kevin, on television, but they used it, of course, in courses like this. So you might, again, want to look up that television show to see is really awful, is really awful. The point of all this is that this still goes on to date, people tend to follow orders, all of us. I'm no better and we all do that, the idea is to make us aware of why we do that. So that we ask questions, and try to deviate from that obedience to authority all the time. [MUSIC]
