Make Your Way 6, Schulbuch mit Audio-CD und CD-ROM

A shocking experiment Read this text about an experiment related to torture. 13 Now get together with a partner and discuss the following questions: • How far do you think the volunteer teachers would go before refusing to go on further? • Look at the comic strips. In No.1, the volunteer “teacher” refuses to continue with the experiment. In No. 2 on the next page, she does what she is TOLD to do, although the “learner” is screaming. Do you think most of the “teachers” behaved as in the first strip or as in the second? How do you think YOU would behave in this situation? e Torturers What kind of people are torturers? Are they people like you and me? Or are they very rare sub-human animals? What do you think? An American scientist, Stanley Milgram, carried out an experiment in order to find out the answer to these questions. The aim of the experiment, in which one person was ordered to hurt another person more and more, was to find out at what point that person would refuse to obey the experimenter and say, “No, I won’t do this any more, it’s wrong.” Volunteers were told that the aim of the experi- ment was to test whether punishment improved the ability to learn. They were the “teachers”. The “learner” was strapped in a chair behind a screen and had electrodes placed on his body. The volunteer “teachers” were not told that the “learner” was in fact an actor, and that his screams were tape-recordings. The “teachers” were to punish him with an electric shock every time he made a mistake in his lesson. The shock generator was an impressive looking instrument with a range of switches from 15 volts to 459 volts and a set of labels going from “slight shock” to “moderate shock”, “strong shock”, “very strong shock”, “intensive shock”, and finally “XXX danger – severe shock”. to strap sb.: jmdn. festbinden/festschnallen 201 6 Compact unit 6: Stand up for your rights! Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv