Editing Evil (section)

=== Milgram experiment ===
{{Main|Milgram experiment}}
In 1961, [[Stanley Milgram]] began an experiment to help explain how thousands of ordinary, non-deviant, people could have reconciled themselves to a role in [[the Holocaust]]. Participants were led to believe they were assisting in an unrelated experiment in which they had to inflict electric shocks on another person. The experiment unexpectedly found that most could be led to inflict the electric shocks,<ref name="ObedStudy">{{cite journal|last=Milgram |first=Stanley |year=1963 |title=Behavioral Study of Obedience |journal=Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology |volume=67 |issue=4 |pages=371–8 |pmid=14049516 |url=http://content.apa.org/journals/abn/67/4/371 |doi=10.1037/h0040525 |citeseerx=10.1.1.599.92 |s2cid=18309531  | issn = 0096-851X}} [http://library.nhsggc.org.uk/mediaAssets/Mental%20Health%20Partnership/Peper%202%2027th%20Nov%20Milgram_Study%20KT.pdf as PDF.] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150404094832/http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/social_dilemmas/fall/Readings/Week_06/milgram.pdf |date=April 4, 2015 }}</ref> including shocks that would have been fatal if they had been real.<ref name=Blass1991>{{Cite journal | first = Thomas | last = Blass | year = 1991 | title = Understanding behavior in the Milgram obedience experiment: The role of personality, situations, and their interactions | journal =  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology| volume = 60 | issue = 3 | pages = 398–413 | doi =10.1037/0022-3514.60.3.398 | url = http://www.stanleymilgram.com/pdf/understanding%20behavoir.pdf  | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160307085220/http://stanleymilgram.com/pdf/understanding%20behavoir.pdf | archive-date = March 7, 2016}}</ref> The participants tended to be uncomfortable and reluctant in the role. Nearly all stopped at some point to question the experiment, but most continued after being reassured.<ref name="ObedStudy"/>

A 2014 re-assessment of Milgram's work argued that the results should be interpreted with the "engaged [[followership]]" model: that people are not simply obeying the orders of a leader, but instead are willing to continue the experiment because of their desire to support the scientific goals of the leader and because of a lack of identification with the learner.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Haslam|first1=S. Alexander|last2=Reicher|first2=Stephen D.|last3=Birney|first3=Megan E.|date=September 1, 2014|title=Nothing by Mere Authority: Evidence that in an Experimental Analogue of the Milgram Paradigm Participants are Motivated not by Orders but by Appeals to Science |journal=Journal of Social Issues|language=en|volume=70|issue=3|pages=473–488|doi=10.1111/josi.12072|issn=1540-4560|hdl=10034/604991|hdl-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Haslam |first1=S. Alexander |last2=Reicher |first2=Stephen D. |title=50 Years of "Obedience to Authority": From Blind Conformity to Engaged Followership |journal=[[Annual Review of Law and Social Science]] |date=13 October 2017 |volume=13 |issue=1 |pages=59–78 |doi=10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-110316-113710}}</ref> [[Thomas Blass]] argues that the experiment explains how people can be complicit in roles such as "the dispassionate bureaucrat who may have shipped Jews to [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz]] with the same degree of routinization as potatoes to Bremerhaven". However, like [[James Waller]], he argues that it cannot explain an event like the Holocaust. Unlike the perpetrators of the Holocaust, the participants in Milgram's experiment were reassured that their actions would cause little harm and had little time to contemplate their actions.<ref name=Blass1991/><ref name="Waller-111">{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5QRHKMa_rqgC&pg=PA111 | title=What Can the Milgram Studies Teach Us... | publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] | work=Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing | date=February 22, 2007 | access-date=June 9, 2013 | author=James Waller | pages=111–113 | format=Google Books | isbn=978-0199774852| author-link=James Waller }}</ref>