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Originally Posted by snodvan
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Actually, there's quite a bit of evidence that people will tend to obey any authority figure. There's a well-known psychology experiment carried out a number of years ago. The innocent volunteers were told that the experiment was to measure pain thresh-holds (or something similar, I can't remember the details). The people supposedly being tested were actually acting and were apparently wired up to a set of electrodes. The "scientist" (white coat and all) who was conducting the experiment then told the volunteers to turn up the current applied to the subjects. The latter then put on a good act of being in acute pain, while the "scientist" simply told the volunteers to just keep on applying the current. A significant number of the volunteers kept on obeying orders rather than calling a halt to the process.