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Laughter reaction to acting abusively
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Thu Jun 07 2001 at 12:06:25
In the 1960's, a
bizarre psychology experiment
was performed by a man named
Stanley Milgram
to study
obedience
. He had men individually come into the
laboratory
at
Yale
and then told them they would participate in an experiment on "memory and learning." There was another man in the laboratory as well, who was ostensibly just another
naive
subject, but was really a
confederate
(co-conspirator of the experimentor).
The men were assigned roles: one was
teacher
, one was
learner
. The learner (who was always the confederate) was given a list of word pairs and was told to memorize them. He had to go sit in a separate room and was bound to a chair, from which he could receive electric shocks administered by the "teacher" (the naive participant). The experiment
facilitator
remained in the room with the teacher, while the other man was supposedly in the other room giving answers to the questions given to him about what word goes with the other.
The man had to give a
shock
to the learner every time he got a word pair
wrong
, and had to
increase
the
voltage
of the shock with each subsequent incorrect answer. The shocks began with mild voltages, and the
machine
(which was just an elaborate set-up and had no capability of giving real shocks) went up to voltages that were labeled as "
DANGER
: Severe Shock." At around 300 volts, the man in the other room would begin
pounding
on the wall, saying he wanted to be let out and that he was having
heart problems
, but the teacher was always urged by the experimenter to continue. After 300 volts, the "learner" simply stopped responding to the "teacher's" questions, and the teacher was told to take this as an incorrect response and shock the learner anyway. You'd think that most people would refuse to
administer
any more
shocks
once the guy began
yelling
that he was in
pain
and
pounding
on the walls. But the majority of subjects (65%) continued on to the very highest shock, just because the experimenter urged them to, and only stopped when the experimenter told them to.
Milgram
wrote in his experiment report that they observed usual signs of
anxiety
and
tension
and
nervousness
in the men administering the supposed shocks, but the most unusual and unexpected thing they saw was fits of
nervous laughter
. Several men
giggled
fiercely every time they had to give a shock. A few had
continuous
laughter, and one man broke into such a
seizure
of
uncontrollable
laughter
that the facilitator had to end the experiment. Afterwards, the men were interviewed and
debrief
ed (meaning they were told about the true nature of the study), and all men insisted they weren't
sadistic
, they were just laughing out of
nervousness
.
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