Do Humans Have an Own Will or They Become Controllable in The Crowd?
In the following text we are going to examine human controllability. In the history there were periods of time when people were controllable and also when not.
1961 Stanley Milgram performed the experiment on obedience in Yale University. He asked the participants to conduct electricity into a“student” next door. They determined the size of the electrik shock, they could regulate from mild to dangerous. The “student” was an undercover actor and the electric shock were not real. The participant could saw that the more they turned on the size of the shock the more the “student” suffered, the actor played the roll very believably. Milgram noticed that 67% of the participants obeyed to the experimental leader. The reason was not that the participants found joy in hurting someone else, most of them felt uncomfortable. Howevere, when the leader said it was urgent to finish the experiment, he gave instructions which became more gangerous as the experiment went on.
- (“It’s important for the experiment to go on!”- Stanley Milgram)
- (“You don’t have other choice just only to go on!”- Stanley Milgram)
The reason why the participants followed the instructions was the obedience to power which is considered as a social norm.
Hierarchy is an important element of survival, althought throughout history it transformed into an ‘overcoming compulsion’. However it was not always this way, think about the old times, cavemen, when everything and everyone had their place in the tribe. They did not strive for hierarhcy, rather the symbiosis played a huge role in their survival.
As also Milgram established, humans become controllable for the greater good, somethines they do not even realize how absurb what they are asked to do for it.
What do you think about the topic?