Thursday, January 11, 2007


The Science of Evil
...In ABC News' version of the Milgram experiment, we tested 18 men, and found that 65 percent of them agreed to administer increasingly painful electric shocks when ordered by an authority figure.

22 women signed up for our experiment. Even though most people said that women would be less likely to inflict pain on the learner, a surprising 73 percent yielded to the orders of the experimenter.

Out of the 30 people we tested with an additional accomplice acting as a moral guide, 63 percent still inflicted electric shocks, even though the accomplice refused to go on.

Our subjects had an unusually high level of education. 22.9 percent had some college, 40 percent had bachelor's degrees and 20 percent had master's degrees.

The group was also ethnically diverse with 54.3 percent (white), 18.6 percent (Asian), 12.9 percent (Latin/Hispanic), 8.6 percent (Indian-Asian) and 4.3 percent (African -American).