The Experimenter

The Experimenter is a movie based on the true story of a social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, who had studied on obedience through conducting a series of experiments back in 1961. The study had stirred up controversy to not only the psychology world but also the whole world during that time.

Most of the people tend to believe or assume that they are kind in nature and that they would not intentionally hurt someone. This study conducted by Milgram would have an authority figure, a teacher(participants) and a learner(confederate), where the teacher would be ask to administer shock to the learner when the learner did not answer the question correctly. This idea, that came out of his curiosity of why would the followers of Nazis would obey to instructions of execution without questions or guilt. not only had administered physical test shock to the participants, but also psychological shock to them. The controversy was mainly about the ethical issue in it as participants were observed being under a great amount of distress during the experiment, due to their cognitive dissonance. They knew that it was not appropriate to administer shock to these people, yet they continue doing so. The experiment was indeed very interesting as people kind of found the true side of them when it comes to situation where they are required to merely obey to an authority figure without doubts.

On a side note, I believe that one of the controversies was that people did not feel comfortable being revealed or confronted as being an unkind person. The concept of self-presentation refers to the extent of people behave according to how they want others to perceive themselves. During the experiment, especially during the debriefing after it is over, the participants felt relieved that they did not really hurt the learner, yet they felt contradicted as they could not accept this side of them where they were actually willing to hurt someone else. The criticism regarding ethical issue seems more like a defense mechanism that the world used to defend themselves from being tested on this even further. They want to stop talking / disucssing about it. This is what the movie is trying to portray through the scenes where an elephant was walking behind Milgram. It is actually used to resemble the metaphorical idiom "elephant in the room", hinting on the phenomenon in which people's refusal to admit or discuss about an obvious risk.

I have always had interest in topic about obedience since I first get my hands on this research when I first attended PSY 111 Social Psychology class. I found this study amazing as it reveals a down side of human's behavior. If I were to conduct a social experiment without ethical or budgeting limit, I would really want to do something about to what extent would people go for their own pleasure at the expense of others. I have not had an actual idea on how to do this but I really want to find out more about the selfishness in people.