Chances are you underestimate your capacity for cruelty. Stanley Milgram's famous obedience experiments carried out at Yale University in order to try to understand the Holocaust in the 1960s and '70s, proved that we are able to inflict pain on complete strangers when impelled to do so by an authority figure. Four out of five persons will obey orders and give electric shocks to another person, even if their innocent 'victim' is crying out in pain.

 

Milgram's experiments were so controversial they have rarely been repeated. The latest version is the first in more than three decades. Dr. Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University in California said the experiment, published in the American Psychologist, can only partly explain the widely reported prisoner abuse at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq or events during World War Two.

 

Burger modified the experiment, by stopping at the 150 volt point for the 29 men and 41 women in his experiment. He measured how many of his volunteers began to deliver another shock when prompted by the experiment's leader - but instead of letting them do so, stopped them. If students failed to answer a question correctly, the volunteers were told to shock them.

They were also told that each time the button was pressed, the shocks would get worse. In reality, the students were actors and the electric shocks were faked.

Some volunteers even carried on giving 450-volt shocks even when there was no further response from the actor, suggesting he was either unconscious or dead.

 

“People learning about Milgram's work often wonder whether results would be any different today," said Professor Burger. In his experiment, 70% of the participants were willing to proceed past the maximum 150-volt jolt level; in the corresponding Milgram experiment, 83% continued. Referring to this result, Burger said "that was surprising and disappointing.

 

Both studies indicate that despite 60 years of progress, human nature is as weak and malleable as ever. These experiments may help explain why apparently ordinary people can commit atrocities and why, in times of conflict, they could take part in genocide.

 

Humanity's cruelty is, like everything else, situational. We seem to be inclined to follow orders, even when they are harmful to others. In her portrayal of Nazi middle-manager Adolf Eichmann, Hannah Arendt called this impulse as "the banality of evil." Evil is a much too strong word for the conduct of this study's participants, but it seems clear that despite all of humanity's horror shows over the past decades, we are still not getting the message as well we do not understand yet what life is all about.