GRADE: 6
About several experiments in the field of social psychology and several real-world stories that demonstrate the extent to which most humans will blindly obey authority figures, or, more generally, either fail to refrain from doing something bad or fail to help someone in trouble when they believe the responsibility is diffused among others.
Director: Alex Gibney
Country: USA
THOUGHTS:
Brief introduction to some dark experiments in and episodes of human behavior in which seemingly decent people are capable of doing terrible things. Covers the Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments, but also delves into Abu Graib, the McDonald’s strip search caller, the Kitty Genovese murder, and a hazing ritual gone wrong. All interesting stuff, but too lightly covered to really grab the interest of anyone who isn’t new to the information. The film is also highly dubious in its assessment of the Kitty Genovese story.