Expert and lay predictions of obedience were wrong by a wide margin

Evidence

It may seem trivial. It is not. Before Milgram’s experiments, few people, professionals and lay alike, anticipated what Milgram was about to discover. Virtually all ordinary middle-class males, and all competent and respected members of the psychological profession, whom Milgram asked what the results of the experiments are likely to be, were confident that 100 per cent of the subjects would refuse to co-operate as the cruelty of actions they were commanded to perform grew, and would at some fairly low point break off. In fact the proportion of people who did withdraw their consent went down in appropriate circumstances, to as little as 30 per cent. The intensity of alleged electric shocks they were prepared to apply was up to three times higher than what the learned experts, in unison with the lay public, were able to imagine. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 437

Categorization

• QUESTION: Bauman cites only 30 per cent withdrawal and up to triple the shock intensity — worth checking exact Milgram figures on obedience rates across conditions before citing.
• XREF: connects to: Confidence in expert systems can be catastrophically misplaced — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 13; Expecting rationality yields better predictions of behavior than expecting irrationality.; Expert legitimacy can override moral drives even when actors know their acts are wrong — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 564 (+4 more)

Related

• Expert legitimacy can override moral drives even when actors know their acts are wrong (similarity 0.85)
• Milgram’s obedience theory locates harsh action in situational authority pressure, not internal hatred. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Confidence in expert systems can be catastrophically misplaced #expands (0.80) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 13
• Mass-psychology predictions missed mass man’s radical loss of self-interest #expands (0.80)
• Expert legitimacy can override moral drives even when actors know their acts are wrong #expands (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 564
• Expecting rationality yields better predictions of behavior than expecting irrationality. #corroborates (0.72)
• Moral dispositions resist contrary incentives yet people overestimate their behavioral role #corroborates (0.72) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 216
• Predictable regularity of behavior does not amount to trust #complicates (0.72)