View From the Bushes

Today I had my blog all but done and the browser crashed, hard. It wouldn't even let me back in, it kept telling me my profile was already in use, and this is even after I rebooted... weird. In any case, let's see how much I can put out there in the 5 minutes I have before my interview.

I gave a talk on obedience yesterday in church, and for some reason I decided to tell them about the famous experiment Stanley Milgram did on obedience to authority back in the 60's. I'm not sure how well it went over, but my oldest daughter was intrigued and asked me several questions. I explained as best I could and then showed her a video I had found on the subject. It was probably more information then she wanted.

I heard about the Milgram experiment, along with a couple of others in a psych class I took in college. One of the other very interesting experiments involved peer pressure. The subject was taken into a room, ostensibly to review a video. On his way back into the room he would pass a man working on a high ladder. About ten minutes into the movie he would hear the man fall. In half the cases he was alone and in that situation the subject would go check on the man 80% of the time. The other half of the time he would be paired with an actor who would look up, briefly, at the sound of the fall, but then go back to work. In this case the subject would go check on the man only 20% of the time.

Research like this into what has become known as the Bystander Effect was prompted by the murder of Kitty Genovese. Well that's it, I'm out of time. Till tomorrow...

Full of psychological zeal
Ross