alt Hacker News> It points out that the compliant subjects who delivered the shocks weren't always following the procedure they were given perfectly. Which is, of course, expected, since people in general don't follow instructions 100% perfectly all the time
The article quantifies the amount of rulebreaking. The article actually compares rule breaking across participants and notes that those who were better at obeying the instructions of the experiment are the ones who refused to continue till the end.
The article doesn't invalidate the milgrim experiments. It claims that the interpretation from traditional literature is possibly wrong.
Yeah one of the take-away interpretations I’ve always heard of it is the implication that the deferral to an authority figure led people to conscientiously proceed with administering fatal shocks. But this additional detail suggests that conscientiousness is actually negatively correlated with following through to the point of ethical compromise and it is, in fact, the less conscientious people who were rushing to just do what was asked of them.
This does suggest that subjects who are bought into and understand the purpose behind what they’re doing, and are attentive to how the specific tasks they’re doing tie into the bigger picture, are more likely to be actively engaging their judgement as they go. And subjects who are just trying to follow the tasks as given to them are sort of washing their hands of the outcomes as long as they’re following the directions (which is, ironically, causing them to fail at following the directions too).