One excellent example of this is the infamous "Milgram Experiment". This experiment was designed to test the statement Nazi officers made once they became imprisoned. "I was just following orders." Do people willfully follow orders, even when they know they are hurting, or painfully killing people. As this experiment scarily proved, yes. Cracked.com explains the set up to this procedure:
"...he ran an experiment where the subject was told he was a "teacher" and that his job was to give a memory test to another subject, located in another room. The whole thing was fake and the other subject was an actor. The subject was told that whenever the other guy gave an incorrect answer, he was to press a button that would give him an electric shock. A guy in a lab coat was there to make sure he did it (again no real shock was being delivered, but the subject of course did not know this).
The subject was told that the shocks started at 45 volts and would increase with every wrong answer. Each time they pushed the button, the actor on the other end would scream and beg for the subject to stop."
You would expect that the subject would stop after the first dozen or so zaps. Or perhaps after the man would be screaming for help. Or even after the man wont unconscious? Or how about dead? 65% never stopped. The authoritative figure told them to press the button, and even when the man was withering on the floor, crying, screaming for the experiment to stop and be released, the subject pressed it. Even when they man stopped moving at all they pressed it. They had no contract, it was just a quick gig. They could leave at any time. However they continued they subject a man to extreme pain just because someone that seemed to have authority over them told them too.Another example of the public listening to authoritative figures is the War of the worlds broadcast. A radio station did a dramatization of the book War of the worlds. They pretended to be a news station stationed in this book, reeling off the coverage as aliens land and take over the world. As irrational as this seems, thousands rioted, believing it was the end of the world. These people listened the authoritative figure, in this case the radio broadcaster, and assumed it to be true.
Lasting, a great, and slightly controversial, example is Fox News. After the Obama administration took over the white house fox news has steadily increased its adverse coverage of the Obama administration. In fact, it has taken to lies that not only sound illogical, Such as that he is both a Muslim and an atheist, two contradictory terms, but also ones that sound like conspiracy theories. Recently I was told by a fellow student that swine flu is a genetically engineered weapon perpetrated by the Obama administration to rally support of his health-care bill. Thus this is yet another great example of how people listen to authoritative figures blindly.
All this madness seems like a horrible thing, one that we should have stopped listening to thousands of years ago. However, even twenty years ago this behavior was fine. Only people who understood things could spread information easily to others. It was basically only via books, which required a publisher to accept them. However, in this age of the Internet and the television, where anyone at all can send out information to all the masses, with absolutely no fact checking,we still retain this aging view of "If we read it, it must be true" Thus as a society we need to quickly learn to change this feeling as to ensure we are not mislead by some lunatic on the Internet with his own blog.
Photo courtesy of cracked.com
