Is the Situation Engulfing Character?

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

This is the deep tradition with social psychology to try to argue this point, that the situation engulfs overwhelms anything like character. And when you get into the moral domain, this has some really, really serious implications. Mayy people just don't really deserve to be praised for their character. It's a way of distributing or deflecting the responsibility from what you're actually so that it's not you. The milgrimmans, ambardo stuff is just, they're just particularly good examples of this. But there's plenty of other evidence.

After discussing some listener feedback about the movie Swingers, Tamler and David talk about two classic experiments in social psychology: the Milgram Experiments and the Zimbardo Prison experiment. They discuss the power of the situation, its influence on recent philosophy, and whether there is room given the evidence to believe in moral character and virtue. Also, Tamler admits to his former struggles with hard core street drugs, and Dave ponders which prison gang would be most accepting if he had to serve hard time.

Links

"Swingers," Directed by Jon Favreau [metacritic.com]

The Milgram Experiment [Wikipedia.org]

Video clip of a replication of the Milgram Experiment [youtube.com]

The Stanford Prison Experiment [Wikipedia.org]

Short video on Stanford Prison Experiment [youtube.com]

Asch Conformity Experiment [youtube.com]

Jon Doris "Lack of Character" [amazon.com]

Support Very Bad Wizards