(This blog was originally posted on February
6, 2015)
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| Photo by Rick Hustead |
Experimenter
is being promoted at the 2015 Sundance
Film Festival this week. The film is about psychologist Stanley
Milgram, whose 1961 obedience
experiment famously demonstrated how obedient people could be when they are
confronted with real or perceived authority.
I remember
reading about this project while I was pursuing my undergraduate degree psychology.
In it, participants were made to deliver electric shocks of various and
increasing intensity to other people. The Yale University psychologist was
interested to see at what point and under what circumstance a participant would
disobey authority: i.e., refuse to administer the shocks, which were portrayed
as extremely painful and possibly causing permanent physical damage to the
recipient. In fact, the “shocks” were imaginary and the people who were
supposedly receiving them were actually members of Milgram’s research team. Ultimately,
the researcher reported that 65 percent of the participants were willing to
administer the electric shocks to others despite the extreme stress they
reported feeling while administering the shocks and the pain they believed they
were causing others.
Remembering and
thinking about this study made me cringe, but it also made me wonder: Could John Kappas, Ph.D.’s models of
suggestibility explain the social psychologist’s observations? Following are
reasons why I think the Hypnosis
Motivation Institute founder’s theories work very well to explain why Milgram’s
research participants were willing (albeit begrudgingly) to continue to
administer those shocks.
- He had authority. Milgram was conducting his research in a prominent and respected academic university. Since he held a Ph.D. in psychology his subjects would have called him “Dr.,” which automatically implies a position of power or authority.
- He had a message: The psychologist told the participants what to do and when to do it, and he did not waver from his instruction even when they voiced concerns about the harm the continued shocks must be doing to the shock recipients.
- He overloaded the participants’ conscious and subconscious minds with written and auditory information (message units) about the intensity of the electric shocks being delivered and the sounds/exclamations of pain that the recipients uttered. Milgram also continued to deliver his authoritarian patter of instructions that the participants should continue to administer the shocks even if and when they wanted to stop taking part in the experiment.
Afterward,
Milgram and his team debriefed the participants to explain that the electric
shocks used during the experiment were imaginary and reassured them that no one
had been harmed in any way. I’m sure that was a relief for those who had obeyed
each one of the psychologist’s instructions to complete the experiment. The
questionable and controversial ethics of his research design reportedly resulted
in the American Psychological Association
creating ethical standards for ensuring the physical, emotional and
psychological well-being of participants in future studies.
I also follow
the APA’s guidelines for ethics and professional conduct when I work with
hypnotherapy clients. I will not and would not ask you to say or do anything
while in hypnosis that you would not say or do while in a fully alert state of
awareness. Furthermore, your subconscious mind would not comply with any
hypnotic suggestion(s) that contradicted your ethical and moral beliefs. For
more information about hypnosis and how it works, check out the Hypnosis
Facts link on my website.
Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern
California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in
2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy®
and to set up an appointment, please
visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
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