Study reveals most of us would torture others if ordered to

Most of us would torture others if ordered to do so, a study has found.

Scientists revealed that 70 per cent of volunteers, when encouraged by authority figures, continued to administer electric shocks - or at least thought they were doing so - even after an actor claimed they were painful.
Researchers at Santa Clara University in California said the experiment can only partly explain the widely reported prisoner abuse at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq or events during World War II.
Jerry Burger said: 'What we found is validation of the same argument - if you put people into certain situations, they will act in surprising, and maybe often even disturbing, ways.
U.S. soldier Lynndie England holds a leash tied around the neck of a naked man in Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. She was later sentenced to 36 months in jail for abusing prisoners
'This research is still relevant.'
Burger was copying an experiment published in 1961 by Yale University professor Stanley Milgram, in which volunteers were asked to deliver electric 'shocks' to other people if they answered certain questions incorrectly.

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