The experiment was paralleling that the Yale Psychologist Stanley Milgram, in which individuals were told to inflict pain on subjects. Similar to the French show, most of the recruits in that experiment went forward and followed the authority of doctors in white coats, even as they heard screams and pleas from the person next room that they thought they were torturing.
Psychologists have used the results of Milgram’s experiment and others done since then to support the concept that in contrast to the belief of many, it doesn’t take a mentally deranged individual to commit horrific acts. But rather, under certain social circumstances, any average individual is capable of committing violence against another individual. These circumstances often involve someone with an apparent claim of authority who is issuing the or…