Outsourced Responsibility--Milgram #18

Someone commented about on an earlier post and brought up Hannah Arendt and I want to respond. The outsourcing of responsibility you speak of corresponds closely to Milgram’s experiment #18 that I posted about earlier. The experiment was significant because 37 out of 40 participants administered the full range of shocks up to 450 volts, the highest obedience rate Milgram found in his whole series. In this variation, the actual subject did not pull the shock lever; instead he only conveyed information to the peer who pulled the lever. According to Milgram, the subject shifts responsibility to another person and does not blame himself for what happens. This resembles real-life incidents in which people see themselves as merely cogs in a wheel, just "doing their job," allowing them to avoid responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

Check out this video clip of one of Milgram's experiments.