We loosen our morals when an authority tells us to
It's one of the oldest psychology facts in the books: In the 1960s, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram infamously conducted an experiment that he thought would prove
Americans wouldn't accept immoral orders like the Nazis had.
For a "learning task," volunteers were told
to deliver shocks to a "learner" (an actor, little known to the real volunteers)
if they got an answer wrong.
To Milgram's horror,
the participants continued delivering shocks, even when the learner screamed in pain.
