Learning the Wrong Lessons

Inside Higher Ed:

Here is the lesson people want to learn from the Penn State scandal: There are some smarmy folks out there who, through a combination of mindless groupthink and fear of antagonizing important people, will do unimaginable things, like not reporting child abusers to the police; perhaps there are other “Penn States” out there or possibly there even are people at our own institution who are hiding seriously dirty linen about which we know nothing. The one thing we know for sure is that we never would act the way those people did.

That’s the wrong lesson. Here’s why.

In the 1960s, the late Stanley Milgram did a series of studies while a faculty member at Yale University. Although the initial studies are old, they have been replicated many times since, across time and place. Milgram would have two study participants enter a room. One would be assigned, seemingly at random, to the role of learner and the other to the role of teacher. Unbeknownst to the teacher, who was a naïve subject, the role assignments were rigged and the learner was a confederate of the experimenter’s.

Read the whole story: Inside Higher Ed