Experimenter Page #5

and, subsequently,

one other member of our staff,

will face the rear.

And you'll see how this man in

the trench coat...

...tries to maintain his

individuality,

but, little by little...

...he looks at his watch but

he's really making an excuse

for turning just a little bit

more to the wall."

Actually, it's true.

There's an element of illusion

in almost all my work.

This man has apparently

been in groups before.

Candid Camera was a reference point,

I never deny that.

You can see that plainly enough

in the lost letter technique,

which I conceived of at Yale and

was refined at Harvard.

Leave a letter, a sealed,

stamped letter

but un-mailed,

for someone else to find.

Leave it on a sidewalk,

inside a store, a phone booth.

Put it under the windshield

wipers of a parked car

with a note saying,

"Found near car."

All letters are addressed to

the same post office box.

But they're evenly split between

four different

intended recipients.

Friends of the Communist Party,

friends of the Nazi Party,

Medical Research Associates,

and Mr. Walter Carnap.

All fictitious.

The innocuous content of

the letters,

if anyone's curious enough

to open and read,

was a simple message

from "Max" to "Walter"

proposing an upcoming meeting.

Carnap.

It's kind of an odd name.

Like the philosopher?

In two weeks,

out of 100 lost letters

to each addressee,

72 were sent to the Medical

Research Associates,

whilst 71 were sent to

Mr. Walter Carnap,

but a mere 25 to

the Friends of the Communists,

and the same number, 25,

to the Nazis.

We can deduce from this

that the American public

has an aversion

to Nazis and Communists.

Results that are reasonable

and even comforting,

though not startling.

But why not take it further?

Taketo Murata, another student,

drives to Charlotte and

Raleigh, North Carolina,

to lose a new batch of letters.

When the letters come back,

the percentages, once again,

confirm expected prejudices.

Pro-white letters get mailed

more often

in white neighborhoods.

More pro-negro letters get

mailed from black neighborhoods.

A variation.

I hire a pilot with

a Piper Cub to fly low

over Worcester, Massachusetts,

spilling lost letters.

They land in trees, ponds,

on rooftops.

Not all my ideas are brilliant.

Well, it's not on the front page,

strangely enough.

I found it. Page ten.

Okay. Uh...

"Yale experiment shows

many distraught over cruelty

but did not stop."

It's odd to see one's name

in the paper,

but maybe I can get used to it.

"Subjects have been studied

under 24 different experimental

conditions."

It wasn't a thousand, was it?

I talked to him for

over half an hour

and I don't see

a single direct quote.

"Dr. Milgram pointed out that,

'From 1933 to 1945,

millions of persons

were systematically slaughtered

on command.

Gas chambers were built,

death camps were guarded,

corpses were produced

with the same efficiency

as the manufacture of appliances."'

There's a quote.

Do you think anyone else reads

this paper?

President Kennedy has been shot.

He was shot in the motorcade

in Dallas.

He was shot in the head.

It's Milgram. It's just another

one of his experiments.

- On the level?

- Yes.

Kelly, you've got that radio,

yeah? Turn it on.

...his tour

of the City of Dallas, Texas.

A presidential aide,

Mario Bryan, said he had

no information on whether

the President is alive..."

He's rigged a faked broadcast,

like Orson Welles.

I have?

I wonder what the experiment's

really about?

- This is real.

- ...the president is critical.

Texas Governor John Connally

also was shot

and has been taken to surgery

in Parkland Hospital...

I got it cheap, I got it cheap

from a grad student.

He gave me a deal when he realized

he couldn't take it with him

to London.

It's making a funny noise.

Maybe you can have a look.

- Stanley...

- You love this kind of thing.

The dean lives

right across the street.

We just applied for

financial aid.

A Jaguar, right.

What's he going to think?

What...

Who cares what he thinks?

I didn't say that.

- Well...

- I didn't say that.

Yeah.

See you soon.

It was cheaper than you think,

but I understand it creates

the wrong impression.

- Do you?

- I do.

Or are you just doing an imitation of

someone who listens,

who's reasonable?

Well, we're going to need two cars.

Hmm.

Is that the dean?

Well, maybe it'll impress

the Harvard tenure committee.

Who cares what they think?

- So you returned the car?

- I did.

- It was sensible.

- Hmm.

I don't know a single tenured

professor who drives a Jaguar.

I didn't like the color.

If you get turned down it won't

be because of an automobile.

But it's got to sting, yeah?

The attacks, the criticisms,

the violent reactions.

That woman was going through

a divorce, it turns out.

I didn't take it personally.

I'm going through a divorce.

I don't spit at people.

I'm sorry to hear that.

Thank you.

It's true that I am, possibly,

more than commonly on edge,

but how would you feel if you

picked up a copy of

American Psychologist

and found yourself attacked in

an article called

"Some Thoughts on Ethics in Research:

a Response to Milgram's

Behavioral Study of Obedience"?

Psychiatrists,

many of you in this room,

predicted that only one person

in a thousand

would deliver the shocks across

the board,

an estimate that was off by

a factor of 500.

So what happened in the lab was

discovered, not planned.

But you expected, you knew you

were going to worry some people.

- Mmm.

- Stress, in fact,

- was a part of it.

- Well, every...

Extreme stress.

Every experiment is a situation

where the end is unknown,

indeterminate,

something that might fail.

The indeterminacy is part of

the excitement.

Ethics. The undertow of ethics.

I wanted to ask a question,

a series of questions

about the psychological function

of obedience.

The conditions that shape it,

the defense mechanisms it entails.

The emotional forces

that keep a person obeying.

As someone with pretensions as

a moral educator,

let me suggest that science must

enhance our moral personhood,

not... not diminish it.

You forced people

to torture other people.

- No.

- To see if they...

No. No. No.

That is alien to my view.

No one was forced, right?

The experimenter told the

subject to perform an action.

What happened between

the command and the outcome

is the individual.

With conscience and a will,

who can either obey or disobey.

I don't see how you can

seriously equate victimization

in a laboratory con

with the willful participation

in mass murder.

Victimization? Look...

When the experiments were complete...

all the subjects were sent this

questionnaire. Here's some examples.

Eighty-four percent said they were

glad to have been in the experiment.

Fifteen percent

indicated neutral feelings.

One point three percent

indicated negative feelings.

One point three percent.

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