Posted by lentoutcry 3 days ago
Turns out those are not valid examples either. So I am genuinely wondering: what remains of the field of psychology, except for a group of people who find it interesting to think about how other people think/behave? Are there examples of actual, useful and valid conclusions coming from that field?
See also the replication crisis.
In order for someone to answer this, I think you need to come up with some sort of definition what "actual", "useful" and "valid" actually means here in this context.
Lots of stuff from psychology been successfully applied to treat people in therapy with various issues, but is that "valid" enough for you? Something tells me you already know some people are being helped in therapy one way or another, yet it seems to me those might not be "useful" enough, since I don't clearly understand what would be "useful" to you if not those examples.
I don't know what experience of therapy you've had in the past, but this is typically not how it works. People get better when a treatment is applied that is suitable to them as a person and the context, not sure where you'd get the whole "people get better no matter what treatment is applied", haven't been true in my experience.
> While every obedient participant reliably pressed the shock lever, they regularly neglected or ruined the other steps required to justify the shock.
Procedural violations here include things like asking the question while the person in the other room was still screaming.
And based on everyone I've met, and on Dan Ariely's own actions (1), I've concluded this one is true.
We all cheat a little from time to time.
Ex : for me, driving a few km/h above the speed limit is "cheating a little"
1 : https://www.businessinsider.com/dan-ariely-duke-fraud-invest...
His relationship with Jeffrey Epstein isn’t a good look either.
Mason Cooley
The performance, or signal, or whatever we're calling it. That's the important thing.
And also this: The most frequent violation in obedient sessions (those who shocked till the end) involved reading the memory test questions over the simulated screams of the learner. Doing this effectively guaranteed that the learner would fail the test and receive another shock.
Basically, being willing to shock other people without stopping was more about violence itself being permitted then about being obedient person. Rule followers followed the protocol until they concluded "nope, this is too much" and stopped mistreating the victim.
The article doesn't say that more people refused than was previously known.
It just concludes that most people weren't following instructions in a way that would have supported the validity of the supposed memory experiment.
* Did the subjects who went full voltage stop caring about the "learning" protocol because they realised it was all fake? Then the conclusions of Milgram's experiment are invalid.
* Did the subjects who went full voltage make more mistakes because they were more anxious and fearful of the experimenter? Then underlying fear might be a mechanism for blind obedience, and further research would be interesting.
* Did the subjects who went full voltage just enjoy electrocuting the dude so much that they stopped caring about asking the questions correctly? Then blind obedience is the least of our worries, widespread sadism is much more concerning.
The act of torturing was not due to the torturer obeying the rules. Instead, torturers broke the rules and created conditions that allowed them more torture.