Perhaps teaching children to never question authority was a bad idea
this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2026
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Studies on obedience (e.g. replications of Milgrim Experiment) suggest a lot of factors play into people harming and killing others on behalf of an authority. Original was 65% of participants, but it can to up to 90% with men in authoritarian cultures.
My favorite was Australian women having the lowest rate of obedience in the shock experiment, at only 16%, being relatively individualistic and rebellious culturally, but even less obedient then men as women are less likely to conform when it involves harming others. That may have changed in recent years though, as people more comfortable with authoritarianism tend to be more likely to obey.
Typically, people least likely to obey the order have better social intelligence and moral development. Unfortunately, those traits are far and few between lately...
There's a reason American fascists are trying to demonize the concept of 'empathy'.
From the Wikipedia article Rudolf Höss, about the commandant of Auschwitz.
Absolutely, empathy is easily the enemy of fascism. And the worst thing to them is unity, as we have the most empathy for people we consider in-group, so division only feeds into their agenda.
Do you have a book or a paper which aggregates these studies?
I picked up a fair amount from an OER textbook that references the studies on its chapter on conformity and obedience, but I bet there is a meta analysis out there with a more comprehensive list. The only issue is later studies on this can't ethically go beyond a certain amount of fake voltage, as the original studies went a bit too far it's getting people to think they killed someone.
The textbook in question is available here: https://opentextbc.ca/socialpsychology/
Yo, please do better. I really want to know what you're saying but I cannot figure it out.
Sorry, my phone corrected conform to confirm. I think most people picked that up by context, but simply typing it several times just now it reverted to confirm. Lol