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Food #33: Experiments in Human Nature: What Would You Do?

Karmic Tests Under Real Life Conditions

Blind Obedience [Stanley Milgram]: How did an entire nature become its leader's willing executioners? The answer is inborn blind obedience and abdication of responsibility.

Discrimination Labeling [Jane Elliott]: How do labels of discrimination effect us? A school teacher's test show that labels do more damage that would be readily believed.

Group Think [Solomon Asch]: Do we all go along to get along? Groups can pressure us so much that we can start disbelieving our own eyes as this experiment demonstrates!

Sports Imagery [LV Clark]: How do we improve in any area of life? This famous "basketball experiment" proves that mental conditioning is just as important as physical practice!

Being Instrument [WWYD] What would you do? What we think we would do can only be known under actual real life conditions. Would you help out someone in real need?

Blind Obedience [Stanley Milgram]

"Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God." (Quaker Proverb) Throughout history, blind obedience to evil causes has been the cause of most of the worst karma in the world like wars, terrorism, and suicide bombing. Unfortunately, blind obedience seems to be inborn.

* Tenth Level: In 1975, there was a TV movie, "The Tenth Level", starring William Shatner, Ossie Davis, and John Travolta. If you have ever seen it, it is the kind you would never forget... and one that is relevant in the post-9/11 world.

* Milgram Experiment: "The Tenth Level" was the dramatization of experiments first conducted by Stanley Milgram, a Yale University psychologist. He performed a "Behavioral Study of Obedience" to better understand "blind" obedience.

* Explaining the Holocaust: Milgram really wanted to know: "How had the Holocaust happened? Could it be that Eichmann and all the accomplices in the Holocaust were just following Hitler's orders? Could we call them all accomplices?" So Milgram designed a series of experiments to answer those questions. Although there were many variations, there was one basic process.

* How the Experiment Seemed: The subject (S) is asked to participate in an experiment to determine if pain can be used to improve memory. So an official looking experimenter (E) orders the subject (S) to push levers that are supposed to deliver painful electric shocks to another person who is actually an actor (A).

* How the Experiment Worked: The real experiment is to see if the subject (S) will continue to push levers that will inflict pain on the actor (A). In reality, there were no electric shocks. The actor (A) went into a booth separate from the subject (S). As the subject (S) pushed the levers, they were actually triggering a tape recorder, which played pre-recorded screams keyed for each shock level.

* How the Experiment Turned: When the actor (A) saw the shock indicator cross into the lethal level, they started to bang on the wall separating them from the subject (S). When it became lethal, the actor (A) abruptly stopped screaming for help. Even though the subject (S) hears the actor (A) cry out for mercy, many of them will continue to give shocks despite actor's (A) pleas for mercy as long as the experimenter (E) tells them that it is "their job to continue" with the experiment.

* The Results: Nearly 70% of the subjects (S) were willing to shock the actor (A) to their death as long as the experimenter (E) was willing to accept all the responsibility. That is how blind obedience works to create the worst karma.

Discrimination Labeling [Jane Elliott]

"Oh, Great Spirit, keep me from ever judging a man until I have walked a mile in his moccasins." (Proverb) Karma teaches by experience for most people only learn from what they live through and live with. Labels which create discrimination are one way this happens.

* Discrimination Kills: Shortly after Martin Luther King was murdered on April 1968, elementary school teacher, Jane Elliott of Riceville, Iowa, conducted a now famous experiment in labeling. Her goal was to teach her students what it was really like to suffer from discrimination by having them experience it for themselves.

* Black Like Me: Elliot was inspired by John Howard Griffin's book, "Black Like Me". This was the story of a white man who dyed his skin brown and suffered discrimination while posing as a black man in the South during the '50s.

* How the Experiment Worked: In Elliot's own words: "Suppose we divided the class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed people. Suppose that for the rest of today the blue-eyed people became the inferior group. Then, tomorrow, we will reverse it so that the brown-eyed children were inferior. Wouldn't that give us a better understanding of what discrimination means?"

* How the Experiment Turned: Although the children knew what was coming, that it was an experiment, and that eye color did not matter, they ALL were effected by being LABELED and, as a result, discriminated against.

* Day One: On the first day, Elliot spent some time berating the blue-eyed and explaining WHY the blue-eyed were inferior and the brown-eyed were superior. Then Elliot gave everyone a test: the blue-eyes all scored below the brown-eyes. Significantly, blue-eyes who were usually good students scored below normal while brown-eyes who were usually poor students scored above normal.

* Day Two: On the second day, Elliot spent some time berating the brown-eyed and explaining WHY the brown-eyed were inferior and the blue-eyed were superior. Then Elliot gave everyone a test: the brown-eyes all scored below the blue-eyes. Significantly, brown-eyes who were usually good students scored below normal while blue-eyes who were usually poor students scored above normal.

* The Results: The LABELS we give ourselves and the discrimination that flows from it have a profound influence on our lives. If we give ourselves positive, empowering LABELS, we can outperform our personal best. If we accept negative, disempowering LABELS, we will under perform. Pure and simple!

Group Think [Solomon Asch]

"Policies are constraints on behavior. Constraints create patterns of activity. Patterns can then be noticed." (Robert Hanssen, the worst spy in American history) Group Think is a passion of mind behind some of the worst karma in human history.

* How the Experiment Seemed: Needing money in college, I participated in Solomon Asch's experiment in "Group Cognition" for $50. The test was simple: were two pictures more like or more unlike one another? Everyone who took the written test got a perfect score, myself included. Then there was a verbal test about the same series of pictures. It should have been a no-brainer. Right? Wrong! This test quickly degenerated into an episode of "The Twilight Zone"...

* How the Experiment Worked: Imagine if you will... me sitting at in the last place in a row among a group of students. Each person gave their opinion of "Same/Different" picture verbally: I was last to speak. At first, everyone agreed on the right answer. Then 20% of people gave the wrong answer, then 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, and 90% were wrong. It never got to 100% because I kept on giving the correct answer. Finally, everyone gave the wrong answer... except me. Just when the "Weird Factor" was off the scale, all the students (except me) got on their feet and started clapping. This made it worse for me!

* How the Experiment Turned: Apparently, I was the only one tested who did not knuckle under to the "Group Think" pressure. Around the 50% mark, most experimental subjects started following the group by giving the wrong answer. No one, except me, had ever passed the 80% mark. The point of the experiment was to understand the "Group Think" process in an attempt to understand how ordinary German citizens could become transformed into "Hitler's Willing Executioners".

* The Awful Truth: When asked why I did not follow the group, I replied, "I thought I would not get the $50 if I answered incorrectly." When asked what I thought about other students giving wrong answers, I said that, "the drug problem at this school was worse than I thought..." Fortunately, the other students chose to laugh rather than be insulted (and I did apologize for my insensitive remark).

* The Results: Yet the learning from this experiment was an important one: that only the slightest pressure from a group is needed for an individual to detach from their truth. Unfortunately, going along to get along can become deadly.

Sports Imagery [LV Clark]

"Edmund Hillary, the first person to climb the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest, said it felt exactly the same way it had felt during each of his previous summits. Hillary explained that he had already successfully scaled Everest many times in his mind."

* Sports Imagery: Combining physical training, mental imagery, and emotional control can significantly improve an individual's progress in any sport! This has been proven: the following "Basketball Experiment" has been repeated in many countries by various researchers in different sports: all with the same results!

* How the Experiment Seemed: L. V. Clark of Wayne State University was the first to conduct an experiment to test the power of imagery in sports. [For those who want to look it up: Clark LV. "Effect of mental practice on the development of a certain motor skill." Research Quarterly, v31 n4 (Dec 1960):560-569]

* How the Experiment Worked: Clark studied three groups of high school basketball players over a two week period. The first group did nothing extra to improve their skills (only following their usual routine). The second group put in extra practice time by shooting many more free-throws than in their usual routine. The third group put in extra practice time but only by imagining (visualizing) making perfect free-throw shots but not by actually doing "extra, real" physical practice.

* How the Experiment Turned: As expected, the first group (the "do-nothings") performed at the same level as they had done at the start of the experiment. As expected, the second group (the "physical practicers") improved their free-throw skills by a full 24% because the extra practice time made the difference. What was completely unexpected was that the third group (the "mental practicers") improved their free-throw skills by a full 23%! In the years following Clark's 1960 original experiment, similar results were produced by other research studies/teams.

* About the Results: The bottom line is that if we want to improve our outer physical skills, we must also improve our mental/emotional visions. Those who consistently improved their skills the most were those who successfully combined physical with mental and emotional practice. Here is how they did it!

Success with "Sports Imagery" is a three part formula.

One, athletes must put in the time physically practicing their sport so that the body can automatically respond to the mind's commands.
Two, athletes must put in the time mentally practicing their sport so that the mind can get the maximum possible results out of the body.
Three, athletes must put in the time emotionally practicing their sport by cultivating inner calmness so that the body and mind can realize their greatest potential by efficiently focusing all energy on winning.