THAT DAMNED SPREADSHEET
DOES ANYONE TO HEAR ABOUT MY ADVENTURE IN THE SPREADSHEET?
Cause I'm pretty damned sure I know what getting "High" on Milgram means.
Talking about his being rejected by the Magnus Institute, Samama said:
[That definitely feels like when it all started. […] Well, after that it all just went downhill. Didn’t get into Oxford, so I went to Nottingham.]
And that does not sound like what one would say about something that happened when they were, like, eight. So I went to take another look at the spreadsheet. Of course I was wrong, because The Magnus Institute burned in 1999, so he couldn’t have been more than nine, but I found out other stuff.
A thing that bugs me in how I’ve read some discussing the spreadsheet is that Sam has the highest empathy score, and that it made him “too nice/good” for the Institute’s purposes (not necessarily this directly but it has been implied, including in the “recruiting future avatar theories, and… well, implying that low empathy makes you more likely to become a literal monster is quite disgusting, actually).
First, I think we got one thing wrong on the Kohlberg column. Since they are kids, it doesn’t seem shocking that they’d be around stages 1 to 3 of his “Six stages of moral development”; but it doesn’t say Stage 1, 2 or 3 it says Level 1, 2 or 3, and I don’t think it’s a mistake.
His six stages are divided into three levels: Pre-Conventional (1,2), Conventional (3,4) and Post-Conventional (5,6).
People in stages 1 and 2 (Level 1) have a sense of morality that is linked to the direct consequences of their actions on themself — stage 1 is “don’t hit the dog because you’ll be punished” and stage 2 “give her half your banana and you’ll get half her chocolate bar” (very simplified).
People on stages 3 and 4 (Level 2) have internalized their surrounding’s sense of morality and act accordingly — stage 3 being “I’ll get a good grade in being a person by following the rules” and stage 4 “the rules I learnt are true and real, failing to follow them is Wrong and upholding them is Right” (idem).
People on stages 5 and 6 (Level 3) have a personal sense of morality that is critical of societal norms — stage 5 being “there are rules, and those rules can and should be changed through compromise to be fair to the greatest number”, and stage 6 “unfair rules should not be followed, direct consequences like punishment are irrelevant when it comes to deciding to do what it right” (very, very, very simplified).
If I’m right, the spreadsheet is so much more understandable.
First thing I wanted to do was put numbers on how singular Sam’s results are:
He gets “High” on both Milgram and Asch when the overwhelming tendency is that the higher your other scores are, the more likely you are to get “Low”, and the numbers were, indeed, that among the 49 children who scored “High” on both, 33 were in Piaget’s stage 1, 15 were in stage 2 and only Sam was in stage 3.
The 33 kids who were in stage 1 are the opposite of Sam:
(Abbreviating so it’s easier to compare values but P=Piaget, K=Kohlberg, Ps=Prosocial, S-A=Sally-Anne, U=Ultimatum, EI=Empathy Index)
33K: (P) Stage 1 :: (K) Level 1 :: (Ps) Low :: (S-A) Fail :: (U) Unfair :: (EI) ≥62%
Sam: (P) Stage 3 :: (K) Level 3 :: (Ps) High :: (S-A) Pass :: (U) Fair :: (EI) 98%
So that’s weird. And when I went to filter by Kohlberg levels… absolutely no kid that was on “Level 2” scored High on Milgram and Asche.
In fact, among the 99 kids on Kohlberg Level 2, none got “Low” for prosocial, none got “High” on Milgram, only 2 got “High” on Asch.
And when we read “Level 2 (Conventional Morality) instead of “Stage 2 (Pre-Conventional Morality, what benefits me directly)” we can make sense of this:
“To reason in a conventional way is to judge the morality of actions by comparing them to society's views and expectations. […] Conventional morality is characterized by an acceptance of society's conventions concerning right and wrong. At this level an individual obeys rules and follows society's norms even when there are no consequences for obedience or disobedience. Adherence to rules and conventions is somewhat rigid, however, and a rule's appropriateness or fairness is seldom questioned.” (by Kohlberg himself, from Wikipedia)
Adults can be Level 2, by the way. Adults can even be Level 1. Subjects of the Milgram experiment are displaying peak Level 2 behavior.
“High” on Milgram is “Did not electrocute/Disobeyed”
“High” on Asch is “Did not conform”
GOSH THAT IS SATISFYING
Bonus: the average empathy index is 79,1%, the median is 82% with 116 kids below 82%, 13 kids at 82% and 120 kids above. Of the 116 kids below the median, 11 got “Low” on Milgram. Of the 13 median kids, 3 got “Low” on Milgram. Of the 120 kids above, 91 got “Low”.
If we take the average instead, of the 163 kids more empathetic than the average, 100 got “Low” on Milgram, and 2 got “High”, of the 86 less empathetic than the average, 5 got “Low” and 59 for “High” on Milgram.
So actually here, low empathy is inversely correlated to willingness to hurt if ordered to.
And it makes sense. Low empathy is often associated with anti-social personality disorder, autism, depression — and you know what’s very associated with anti-social personality disorder? Disobedience.
Now I have to make another post about the weird kids in red's names.
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