Obedience

The Admiral Rickover Test, administered by Professor Milgram at Yale in 1962.

Fifty percent of the subjects jumped out of the admiral’s second-story window.

Professionals in the field predicted a .1% jump rate, a layman recorded in the film says one or two percent, at a guess.

There is no compulsion of any kind, only the authority of the experimenter.

This gives a statistical evaluation of naval officers, with the proviso that Rickover fired any man who obeyed such an order.

These results also apply to the general population, under such circumstances.

There is no question of sadism or enjoyment in the administering of incremental electric shocks up to 450 volts by a Teacher to a Learner, only the submissiveness to authority.

Milgram’s variants include a tape recording to replace the experimenter’s instructions and supervision. Mission: Impossible has another point of contact, enemy agents working undercover in America must be trained to resist authority so as to pass undetected (“The Carriers”, dir. Sherman Marks).

As documented on film, the experiment naturally resembles an episode of Candid Camera.

The “experimenter”, mostly off-camera, sounds rather like Robert Duvall.

Even when the Learner has ceased to respond, half the Teachers continue to flog a dead horse, for the sake of the experiment.