>>>>>My original observation still stands. What sort of person must one be to even be able to torture another human being? My assumption is that it must be a person devoid of empathy. My guess? A sociopath at least, and maybe even a psychopath.
>>>>
>>>>Just any Joe Q off the street. The experiments were performed (with actors who pretended to be suffering great pain) and the random sample of people had no trouble dialing it to ten. Just as long as they got good reassurance they won't be blamed and that it was for a good cause.
>>>
>>>Are there stats on this? Out of every 100 Joes, how many stopped and how many didn't?
>>
>>
>>I *think* this is the experiment DraganN is referring to.
>>http://home.swbell.net/revscat/perilsOfObedience.html
>>
>>I thought it was rather famous and that everyone knew about it.
>
>Yep, that's it. Even the year matches my memory.
>
>Thanks for the sanity check, though - sometimes I bring up something like this that I know I read several times, and then nobody else seems to know about it... feels anywhere from really weird to utterly Kafkian.

I'd heard of the experiment, but I was unaware of the statistics it produced. Although the first stat, if I recall correctly was 60-40 in favour of those who would go the distance. Ok, that's more than half, but it does fall just a bit short of 'any Joe Q off the street'.