雅思阅读Nature or Nurture
Nature or Nurture?
A few years ago, in one of the most fascinating and disturbing experiments in behavioural psyc hology, Stanley Milgram of Yale University tested 40 subjects from all walks of life for their willi ngness to obey instructions given by a 'leader' in a situation in which the subjects might feel a per sonal distaste for the actions they were called upon to perform. Specifically, Milgram told each vol unteer 'teacher-subject' that the experiment was in the noble cause of education, and was designed t o test whether or not punishing pupils for their mistakes would have a positive effect on the pupils ' ability to learn.
Milgram's experimental set-up involved placing the teacher-subject before a panel of thirty switc hes with labels ranging from '15 vols of electricity (slight shock)' to '450 volts (danger - severe sh ock)' in steps of 15 volts each. The teacher-subject was told that whenever the pupil gave the wro ng answer to a question, a shock was to be administered, beginning at the lowest level and increas ing in severity with each successive wrong answer. The supposed 'pupil' was in reality an actor hir ed by Milgram to simulate receiving the shocks by emitting a spectrum of groans, screams and wri things together with an assortment of statements and expletives denouncing both the experiment and the experimenter. Milgram told the teacher-subject to ignore the reactions of the pupil, and to adm inister whatever level of shock was called for, as per the rule governing the experimental situation of the moment.
As the experiment unfolded, the pupil would deliberately give the wrong answers to questions posed by the teacher, thereby bringing on various electrical punishments, even up to the danger lev el of 300 volts and beyond. Many of the teacher-subjects balked at administering the higher levels of punishment, and turned to Milgram with questioning looks and/or complaints about continuing th e experiment. In these situations, Milgram calmly explained that the teacher-subject was to ignore t he pupil's cries for mercy and carry on with the experiment. If the subject was still reluctant to pr oceed, Milgram said that it was important for the sake of the experiment that the procedure be foll owed through to the end. His final argument was, 'You have no other choice. You must go on.' W hat Milgram was trying to discover was the number of teacher-subjects who would be willing to a dminister the highest levels of shock, even in the face of strong personal and moral revulsion again st the rules and conditions of the experiment.
Prior to carrying out the experiment, Milgram explained his idea to a group of 39 psychiatrists and asked them to predict the average percentage of people in an ordinary population who would be willing to administer the highest shock level of 450 volts. The overwhelming consensus was that vi rtually all the teacher-subjects would refuse to obey the experimenter. They psychiatrists felt that 'm ost subjects would not go beyond 150 volts' and they further anticipated that only four per cent w ould go up to 300 volts.
Furthermore, they thought that only a lunatic fringe of about one in 1,000 would give the high est shock of 450 volts.
What were the actuatl results? Well, over 60 per cent of the teacher-subjects continued to obey Milgram up to the 450-volt limit! In repetitions of the experiment in other countries, the percentag e of obedient teacher-subjects was even higher, reaching 85 per cent in one country. How can we possible account for this vast discrepancey between what calm, rational, knowledgeable people predi ct in the comfort of their study and what pressured, flustered, but cooperative 'teachers' actually do in the laboratory of real life?
One's first inclination might be to argue that there must be some sort of built-in animal aggres sion instinct that was activated by the experimental, and the Milgram's teacher-subjects were just fo llowing a genetic need to discharge this pent-up primal urge onto the pupil by administering the el ectrical shosck. A modern hard-core sociobiologist might even go so far as to claim that this aggre ssive instinct evolved as an advantageous trait, having been of survival value to our ancestors in th
eir struggle against the hardships of life on the plains and in the caves, ultimately finding its way into our genetic make-up as a remnant of our ancient animal ways.
An alternative to this notion of genetic programming is to see the teacher-subjects' actions as a res ult of the social environment under which the experiment was carried out. As Milgram himself poi nted out, 'Most subjects in the experiment see their behaviour in a larger context that is benevolent and useful to society - the pursuit of scientific truth. The psychological laboratory has a strong cl aim to legitimacy and evokes trust and confidence in those who perform. there. An action such as shocking a victim, which in isolation apears evil, acquires a completely different meaning when pla ced in this setting'.
Thus, in this explanation the subject merges his unique personality and personal and moral cod e with that of larger institutional structures, surrendering individual properties like loyalty, self-sacrif ice and discipline to the service of malevolent systems of authority.
Here we have two radically different explanations for why so many teacher-subjects were willing to forgot their sense of personal responsibility for the sake of an institutional authority figure. The pr oblem for biologists, psychologists and anthropologists is to sort out which of these two polar expl anations is more plausible. This, in essence, is the problem of modern sociobiology - to discover th e degree to which hard-wired genetic programming dictates, or at least strongly biases, the interacti on of animals and humans with their environment, that is, their behaviour. Put another way, sociobi ology is concerned with elucidating the biological basis of all behaviour.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-I in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.
a biological explanation of the teacher-subjects' behaviour
the explanation Milgram gave the teacher-subjects for the experiment
the identity of the pupils
the expected statistical outcome
the general aim of sociobiological study
the way Milgram persuaded the teacher-subjects to continue
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