Human Behavior Experiments

In small group we started watching clips mainly focused on Human Behavior and the different experiments that had been conducted in the past to test why ordinary people had conducted these horrific events in history. A main example of this was the Holocaust, histories questioned why the German people acted the way they did under Hitler's rule. An experiment was conducted where two men were "randomly" chosen to participate in a study. In reality only one person was chosen at random and had no idea what to expect. The other man was part of the social experiment and knew what was going on. The man that the experiment was going to be tested on was told to give an assessment to the other person while he was in the other room "hooked up" to an electricity panel. As the assessment went on every wrong answer would result in the man sending an electric current towards the man in the room. As a tape recording played the man being experimented on would continue to zap the student being tested. He would question whether it was correct but every time he was told that he wouldn't bare any responsibility so he would continue. Later we saw an act done not as an experiment but by a random person. He had pretended to be an Officer and called various fast food services and had convinced managers to treat their employs inhumanly such as strip searches. It's things like these that make me question how truthful and how much thought people put into answering the question of what would they do when put in these situations.