Shocking study reveals people still willing to torture

Replication of a notorious"torture" experiment – in which people obediently delivered painful shocks to others if encouraged to do so by authority figures – has come to the same disturbing conclusion.

Seventy per cent of volunteers continued to administer electrical shocks – or at least they believed they were doing so – even after an actor claimed they were painful, Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University, California, found.

"What we found is validation of the same argument – if you put people into certain situations, they will act in surprising, and maybe often even disturbing, ways," Burger says."This research is still relevant."

Burger was replicating an experiment published in 1961 [in the wake of the Holocaust] by Yale University professor Stanley Milgram, in which volunteers were asked to deliver electric"shocks" to other people if they answered certain questions incorrectly.

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