This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science. I'm Steve Mursky. Got a minute?

It's not surprising that in these studies people conformed because they're being pulled in two directions.

It's authority, they might get in trouble or they want to have to be what's called

socially desirable.

There's an effect of that, wanting to please this experimenter.

Mount Sinai Hospital Neuroscientist Heather Berlin.

She's talking about the famous Milgram experiment

in which subjects were told to give what they believed would be

painful electric shocks to people who got answers

wrong on a test. Berlin was part of a panel in New York City February 27th after a performance

of a play about the Milgram experiment.

I moderated the panel.

The majority of subjects in the experiment

delivered the alleged shocks.

The supposed victim was actually unhurt

when commanded to by the person overseeing the experiment.

And you know not everybody conformed right?

You know so 35% of people didn't and it would be interesting to see what was happening

in their brain or mind those who didn't.

But if we tell people about this, our underlying behavior,

if you tell people that conformity and that we're being influenced

by all these factors around us,

...