Pavement Education Project

RFK Jr. says a CIA funded experiment showed how far some Americans would go when ordered by authority figures to hurt another person. But he says the most important lesson came from those who stood up and refused to obey. “During the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA had a program called MKUltra, and they were looking for ways to manipulate individuals and populations to make them compliant and obedient.” “And one of the experiments they funded was an experiment at Yale, and it’s called the Milgram Experiment.” “They got a Yale professor named Stanley Milgram and he would bring subjects in from every walk of American life… He would put them at a table, and he would say, ‘When you turn this dial, there's a guy in the next room who's strapped to a chair, and he's going to get an electric shock.’” “The guy who was running the experiment came out in a white lab coat with all of these vestures of authority on him and he would say, ‘Turn it up.’” “They would turn it up, and they’d hear the person screaming and crying and begging.” “A lot of times they began crying because they didn’t want to do it. They didn’t wanna hurt the person in the next room.” “But nevertheless, when they were ordered to by this supposed doctor, they did it anyway.” “67% of the people turned it all the way up to where it was marked potentially lethal.” “The good news is that 33% got up and walked out.” “These were the people who said, ‘We’re not going to obey undeserving authorities when they order us to do something that we know is against our values.’”