Ticking time bombs.

There's a study that we looked at in Psych, which is possibly one of the most well known studies around. It's called the Milgram experiment. I'll try to give you the short version.

They got about 40 guys to come in for some research. (This was a few years back; they did it at Yale uni.) They said that the study was about how learning was related to punishment/pain. In the experiment, they basically had one guy come in, and one guy that already knew what was happening. They said they would randomly allocate a 'teacher' and a 'learner'. It was rigged so that the person who came in would always be the teacher. The learner was strapped into a chair, and the teacher was given these word sets. They would read out the words, and the learner would respond with the one that was right. If they got it right, nothing happened. If they got it wrong, they got an electric shock. The shocks started at 15 volts, and then worked up in increments of 15 to 450 volts. They were using an impressive looking machine, and about 2/3 of the way along under the knobs it said "lethal", and under the last 3 or so it just read "XXX". Note, however, that at no time was any shock actually given to the learner. The teacher could not see them, and could only hear them. Every now and then, a prerecorded message, such as "Let me out!" etc was played, growing increasingly desperate. After a certain point, no more sound was heard. The 'teacher' was naive to all of this, and thought it was completely real. If they ever said that they wanted to stop, they were told by the researcher that they had to continue for the sake of the experiment.
When this idea was presented to a bunch of professional researchers etc, the most pessimistic of them said that only 3% would go all the way to 450 volts.
The actual result was a massive 62%. These were not bad people; not sadistic, or with some other sort of lack of empathy; they were all fairly average. It was the environment that they were in which lead to their actions.

And that's really what I want you to take from this; when people do bad things, it not always because they're bad people. Sometimes, they're just in terrible situations. There are some people who believe that anyone can do anything, given the right situation; each of us is a ticking time bomb, each which has a different sort of spark that will light it. Perhaps it is pessimistic; perhaps it is realistic. Your thoughts would be welcome here.

As an aside, straight afterwards, the 'learners' came out to show the 'teachers' that they were fine, no harm had been done, etc. As well as this, all of them have been followed up regularly, and basically all of them have said that it was a great experience, and they're glad they did it. If you're interested, a study with similar results is the Stanford prison experiment.