...before you can start adding value to their lifes.
While I researched into the topic of human psychology, which IMO is pretty important for creating a business that adds value to people (in other words you should know your market before you start marketing your product to it) ok whatever, while researching into that topic I came across a pretty interesting experiment that showed me some important things about human behaviour.
I'm talking about Milgram's Experiment carried out by Stanley Milgram. The original experiment started in the 60s, similar experiments based on Milgram's Experiment were conducted over the years in several countries tho, all with pretty much the same results.
Now, what is that experiment about? I searched for a recap of it and found a pretty good and relatively short one on simplypsychology.org that I will just quote now:
Aim
Milgram (1963) was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person. Stanley Milgram was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities for example, Germans in WWII.
Procedure
Volunteers were recruited for a lab experiment investigating “learning” (re: ethics: deception). Participants were 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, whose jobs ranged from unskilled to professional, from the New Haven area. They were paid $4.50 for just turning up.
At the beginning of the experiment they were introduced to another participant, who was actually a confederate of the experimenter (Milgram). They drew straws to determine their roles – learner or teacher – although this was fixed and the confederate was always the learner. There was also an “experimenter” dressed in a grey lab coat, played by an actor (not Milgram).
Two rooms in the Yale Interaction Laboratory were used - one for the learner (with an electric chair) and another for the teacher and experimenter with an electric shock generator.
The “learner” (Mr. Wallace) was strapped to a chair with electrodes. After he has learned a list of word pairs given him to learn, the "teacher" tests him by naming a word and asking the learner to recall its partner/pair from a list of four possible choices.
The teacher is told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time. There were 30 switches on the shock generator marked from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 (danger – severe shock).
The learner gave mainly wrong answers (on purpose) and for each of these the teacher gave him an electric shock. When the teacher refused to administer a shock the experimenter was to give a series of orders / prods to ensure they continued. There were 4 prods and if one was not obeyed then the experimenter (Mr. Williams) read out the next prod, and so on.
Prod 1: please continue.
Prod 2: the experiment requires you to continue.
Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue.
Prod 4: you have no other choice but to continue.
Results
65% (two-thirds) of participants (i.e. teachers) continued to the highest level of 450 volts. All the participants continued to 300 volts.
Milgram did more than one experiment – he carried out 18 variations of his study. All he did was alter the situation (IV) to see how this affected obedience (DV).
Conclusion
Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being. Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up.
People tend to obey orders from other people if they recognize their authority as morally right and / or legally based. This response to legitimate authority is learned in a variety of situations, for example in the family, school and workplace.
Milgram summed up in the article “The Perils of Obedience” (Milgram 1974), writing:
“The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.”
/quote end.
(pls note that a lot of the articles and videos I read and watched are also based on experiments following the first one mentioned in the quote, there were some also done with women and some where people quit earlier than at 300volt, but the percentage of "teachers" who continued until 450volt was almost always pretty much the same)
So most of those "teachers" actually would have killed the "learner" if this wasn't just an experiment, crazy if you watch the videos of the experiments and see how the people react to the authority person. A lot of them wanted to quit it after hearing the screams of the learner but after a few words from the authority person they just continued, even when the learner didn't respond anymore. Some even smiled while triggering the electro shocks, or asked "did we kill him now?" (while laughing) after not hearing anything back from the learner.
You may ask why am I posting this in here? Doesn't has a lot to do with business right? True. It doesn't has much to do with business. But it has to do with human behaviour, with our behaviour, and that definitely has to do with business. So what's my point here, other than sharing some IMO pretty interesting stuff about human psychology?
While I watched the videos about this experiment, I really got chills when one of the "teachers" finally stood up and said "that's it, stop this!" and went out the door, after he heard the screams of the "learner". To create a successful Fastlane business, you have to add value to people's life. But how can you add value to someone's life, if you don't even care about that someone? To actually be able to add value to others you should first start caring about others. The guy who stood up because he couldn't hear the screams of another human being anymore, screams that his actions triggered, cared about that someone. So be that guy and care about people, if you really want to understand people in order to offer them value.
While I researched into the topic of human psychology, which IMO is pretty important for creating a business that adds value to people (in other words you should know your market before you start marketing your product to it) ok whatever, while researching into that topic I came across a pretty interesting experiment that showed me some important things about human behaviour.
I'm talking about Milgram's Experiment carried out by Stanley Milgram. The original experiment started in the 60s, similar experiments based on Milgram's Experiment were conducted over the years in several countries tho, all with pretty much the same results.
Now, what is that experiment about? I searched for a recap of it and found a pretty good and relatively short one on simplypsychology.org that I will just quote now:
Aim
Milgram (1963) was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person. Stanley Milgram was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities for example, Germans in WWII.
Procedure
Volunteers were recruited for a lab experiment investigating “learning” (re: ethics: deception). Participants were 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, whose jobs ranged from unskilled to professional, from the New Haven area. They were paid $4.50 for just turning up.
At the beginning of the experiment they were introduced to another participant, who was actually a confederate of the experimenter (Milgram). They drew straws to determine their roles – learner or teacher – although this was fixed and the confederate was always the learner. There was also an “experimenter” dressed in a grey lab coat, played by an actor (not Milgram).
Two rooms in the Yale Interaction Laboratory were used - one for the learner (with an electric chair) and another for the teacher and experimenter with an electric shock generator.
The “learner” (Mr. Wallace) was strapped to a chair with electrodes. After he has learned a list of word pairs given him to learn, the "teacher" tests him by naming a word and asking the learner to recall its partner/pair from a list of four possible choices.
The teacher is told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time. There were 30 switches on the shock generator marked from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 (danger – severe shock).
The learner gave mainly wrong answers (on purpose) and for each of these the teacher gave him an electric shock. When the teacher refused to administer a shock the experimenter was to give a series of orders / prods to ensure they continued. There were 4 prods and if one was not obeyed then the experimenter (Mr. Williams) read out the next prod, and so on.
Prod 1: please continue.
Prod 2: the experiment requires you to continue.
Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue.
Prod 4: you have no other choice but to continue.
Results
65% (two-thirds) of participants (i.e. teachers) continued to the highest level of 450 volts. All the participants continued to 300 volts.
Milgram did more than one experiment – he carried out 18 variations of his study. All he did was alter the situation (IV) to see how this affected obedience (DV).
Conclusion
Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being. Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up.
People tend to obey orders from other people if they recognize their authority as morally right and / or legally based. This response to legitimate authority is learned in a variety of situations, for example in the family, school and workplace.
Milgram summed up in the article “The Perils of Obedience” (Milgram 1974), writing:
“The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.”
/quote end.
(pls note that a lot of the articles and videos I read and watched are also based on experiments following the first one mentioned in the quote, there were some also done with women and some where people quit earlier than at 300volt, but the percentage of "teachers" who continued until 450volt was almost always pretty much the same)
So most of those "teachers" actually would have killed the "learner" if this wasn't just an experiment, crazy if you watch the videos of the experiments and see how the people react to the authority person. A lot of them wanted to quit it after hearing the screams of the learner but after a few words from the authority person they just continued, even when the learner didn't respond anymore. Some even smiled while triggering the electro shocks, or asked "did we kill him now?" (while laughing) after not hearing anything back from the learner.
You may ask why am I posting this in here? Doesn't has a lot to do with business right? True. It doesn't has much to do with business. But it has to do with human behaviour, with our behaviour, and that definitely has to do with business. So what's my point here, other than sharing some IMO pretty interesting stuff about human psychology?
While I watched the videos about this experiment, I really got chills when one of the "teachers" finally stood up and said "that's it, stop this!" and went out the door, after he heard the screams of the "learner". To create a successful Fastlane business, you have to add value to people's life. But how can you add value to someone's life, if you don't even care about that someone? To actually be able to add value to others you should first start caring about others. The guy who stood up because he couldn't hear the screams of another human being anymore, screams that his actions triggered, cared about that someone. So be that guy and care about people, if you really want to understand people in order to offer them value.
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