Originally published 2015-04-27.
Five experiments are cited again and again as proof that ordinary people can behave badly under pressure: Solomon Asch's conformity studies, the Good Samaritan study, the bystander experiments, the Stanford Prison Experiment and Stanley Milgram's obedience research. Together they suggest that group pressure, hurry, crowds, roles and authority can push people to ignore their own eyes or their own conscience.
Decades of follow-up work have added important nuance. Some findings have held up well, some have been exaggerated in retelling, and one, the Stanford Prison Experiment, is now widely regarded as unreliable. Here is what each study did, what it found and what we know about it today.
1. Asch's conformity experiments (1951 onward)
In 1951, at Swarthmore College, psychologist Solomon Asch asked groups of male students to do something very easy: look at a reference line and say which of three comparison lines matched it. Only one person in each group was a real participant. The others were actors, instructed to give the same wrong answer on 12 of the 18 rounds. The real participant answered last, after hearing everyone else.
When there was no group pressure, people almost never made mistakes; the error rate was under one percent. With a unanimous wrong majority, about a third of answers went along with the group. Around three quarters of participants conformed at least once, while roughly a quarter never did.
The variations are as interesting as the headline. A single ally who gave the right answer cut conformity sharply, and writing answers privately reduced it too. Asch himself stressed that independence was more common than yielding. The lesson is less "people are sheep" and more that standing alone is hard, and one dissenting voice makes it much easier for others to speak up.
2. The Good Samaritan experiment (1973)
In the biblical parable, a priest and a Levite walk past an injured man, and a Samaritan, an outsider, stops to help. Psychologists John Darley and C. Daniel Batson recreated the scene with students at Princeton Theological Seminary.
Each student was asked to prepare a short talk, either on the parable itself or on jobs for seminary graduates, and then sent to another building to deliver it. Some were told they had time to spare, some that they were just on time, and some that they were already late. On the way, each passed a man slumped in a doorway, coughing and groaning. The researchers rated how much help each student offered, from not noticing at all to refusing to leave him.
According to Darley and Batson's report, about 40 percent offered some help. Hurry made the biggest difference: roughly 63 percent helped when they had time, 45 percent when moderately rushed and only 10 percent when late. Students about to speak on the Good Samaritan were somewhat more likely to help, but being rushed mattered more, and some stepped right over the man. How religious the students were did not predict helping.
The researchers noted that many who hurried past seemed anxious when they arrived. They were torn between a stranger and the person waiting for them. The study suggests that time pressure narrows attention, rather than proving that people are heartless.
3. The bystander effect (1968)
John Darley and Bibb Latané began studying why people fail to help in emergencies after the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in New York. In their 1968 experiments, people who believed others were also present were slower to help, or did not help at all, because responsibility felt shared. In a 1969 study by Latané and Judith Rodin, 70 percent of people alone went to help a woman who seemed to have fallen next door, compared with 40 percent of those sitting with a stranger.
Two corrections matter. First, the famous claim that 38 neighbours watched Genovese die and did nothing was badly exaggerated; in 2016 the New York Times itself acknowledged that its original story overstated the number of witnesses and what they saw. Second, a 2011 meta-analysis found the bystander effect is weaker in clearly dangerous situations, and a 2019 study of more than 200 real CCTV recordings from the UK, the Netherlands and South Africa found that someone intervened in over 90 percent of public conflicts, with more bystanders making help more likely.
4. The Stanford Prison Experiment (1971)
In August 1971, Philip Zimbardo turned a basement corridor in Stanford's psychology building into a mock prison. From about 75 applicants answering a newspaper ad offering $15 a day, 24 young men were chosen and randomly assigned to be guards or prisoners. The study was funded by the US Office of Naval Research. Guards quickly became harsh and degrading, several prisoners showed signs of distress, and Zimbardo, playing superintendent, let it continue. He stopped it on the sixth day of a planned two weeks, after graduate student Christina Maslach objected.
For decades the study was taught as proof that situations alone can turn good people cruel. That interpretation has largely collapsed. Archive research by Thibault Le Texier and others showed that guards were coached and encouraged to be tough, and recordings released in 2017 captured a staff member urging a guard to be harsher. One prisoner later said his dramatic breakdown was faked so he could leave. Critics also point out that an ad for a "prison life" study may have attracted more aggressive volunteers. Zimbardo disputed many of these criticisms, but the study is now a lesson as much in research ethics as in human nature, and it helped drive stricter rules for experiments on people.
5. Milgram's obedience experiments (1961)
Stanley Milgram began his experiments at Yale University in August 1961, a few months after the trial of Nazi official Adolf Eichmann opened in Jerusalem. He wanted to know how far ordinary people would go in harming someone when instructed by an authority figure.
In the best-known version, 40 men recruited through newspaper ads acted as "teachers" and were told to give a "learner" an electric shock for each wrong answer. The shock generator ran from 15 to 450 volts in 15-volt steps, with labels rising to "Danger: Severe Shock". The learner was an actor and received no shocks, but he protested, complained of a heart condition and eventually fell silent. When participants hesitated, the experimenter used a fixed series of four prods, ending with the statement that they had no choice but to continue.
Every participant went to at least 300 volts, and 26 of the 40, or 65 percent, went all the way to 450. Beforehand, a group of Yale psychology students had predicted that only about one in a hundred would do so. Many participants sweated, trembled and argued, yet still carried on.
The work drew immediate criticism. Psychologist Diana Baumrind argued in 1964 that Milgram had a duty to stop when participants became distressed. Later, Gina Perry's archive research suggested that the published accounts smoothed over variations in procedure and that many participants doubted the shocks were real. Even so, a partial replication by Jerry Burger in 2009, stopping at 150 volts for ethical reasons, found obedience rates similar to Milgram's, with no difference between men and women. In Milgram's own follow-up survey, 84 percent of former participants said they were glad to have taken part.
What these experiments really tell us
Read together, the studies do not show that humans are simply evil. They show that behaviour depends heavily on context: who is around us, who is giving instructions, how rushed we are and what role we think we are playing. They also show resistance. In every one of these studies, some people refused to conform, stopped to help or walked away.
They also show how science corrects itself. The Genovese story was overstated, the Stanford study was flawed, and the bystander effect is weaker in real dangerous emergencies than the classroom version suggests. Asch and Milgram's core findings have been repeated many times, but with important limits.
How to use the lessons in everyday life
- Be the first dissenter. One voice saying "I see it differently" makes it easier for others to do the same.
- Slow down when someone may need help. Hurry is one of the strongest predictors of walking past.
- Name a specific person in an emergency. "You in the blue jacket, call an ambulance" breaks the diffusion of responsibility.
- Question instructions that feel wrong. Authority makes harmful orders feel normal; asking "why?" restores your own judgement.
Would you have behaved differently from the people in these experiments? Most of us think so. The research suggests the honest answer is "maybe", and that knowing about these pressures is one of the best ways to resist them.
Sources: Wikipedia: Asch conformity experiments; Wikipedia: Parable of the Good Samaritan (Darley & Batson, "From Jerusalem to Jericho", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1973); Wikipedia: Bystander effect; Wikipedia: Stanford prison experiment; Wikipedia: Milgram experiment.
Related:- Szondi Test With Pictures That Will Reveal Your Deepest Hidden Self
- Psychoanalyze Yourself Test
- The Experiment: Separating a Circulating Story From Research
- A Paris Video Contrasts Responses to Two Outfits
- What Can You Learn From a Banana? An Illustrated Prompt
- A Chimpanzee Task Video and the Interpretation of Its Outcome
- A Monkey Reward Experiment and the Response to Unequal Outcomes
- 20 Psychological Life Hacks that Will Help You Gain the Advantage in Social Situations
- Why It’s Important To Understand Your Dark Side
- ActionAid Hellas’s Staged Racist Incident and the Bystanders’ Responses
COMMENTS