Hotspot Engine Project Would you pick up a dropped letter on the side of the road and send it out?
Would you obey an authoritative command to electrocute another person?
Do you talk to strangers you see a lot in your life?
Will you help a lost child?
Will you come out and stop someone when they cut in line?
FamousSocial psychologist MilgramSeven studies were conducted to find out how society works.
1. I'm lost, can you help me find my way home? Are you a helpful one?
If you see a lost child on the street, will you walk away as if you didn't see it?
No! Are you sure?
Milgram found some children between the ages of 6 and 10 to help him complete an experiment. They are sent to the street (for their safety, the relevant experimenters will observe from nearby locations) and then ask for help from the first passer-by: "I'm lost, can you help me find my way home?" ”
In township areas, 72% of pedestrians helped. In cities, only 46% help. The reality behind the data is that even those who don't help are more sympathetic in rural areas, while people in urban areas simply ignore their children, or turn around or just give them money. One New Yorker even said to his child, "Go to the restaurant over there." Your mom is waiting for you right there. ”
2. Only in 10% of cases, those who cut the queue are expelled from the team. 
Milgram sees queuing as a prime example of the masses spontaneously creating social order. But this social order is fragile in the face of some chaotic threats, such as queue cutters. To test people's reactions, Milgram had his assistants cut queues at 129 queues in New York (lottery shops, train stations, etc.).
It turned out that people's reactions were quite mild. Only in 10 per cent of cases, those who cut the queue were expelled from the queue. And only half of the time someone does something. These include, expressions or gestures of disgust, as well as actual verbal objections.
3. Will you obey the unreasonable orders of authority? 
One of the most famous psychosocial experiments is Milgram's obedience experiment. The main purpose of the experiment was to test the extent to which people would follow the orders of an authority figure to harm another person.
In the experiment, the learner (pretending to be the assistant) answers a series of questions, and if he answers it incorrectly, the participant is instructed by a man in a white coat to give the learner (what appears to be the participant's assuming) a fatal electric shock, and the learner will appear in pain.
It was found that 63% of the participants complied with orders until the end of the experiment, and they were given electric shocks, even though the learners screamed in pain, begged to stop, and even eventually collapsed and fainted.
Milgram's experiment with obedience shows, to some extent, the dark side of people bowing to authority.
4. The most familiar strangers are those who used to stand together and wait for the bus. 
Do you see the same people on the road or in the elevator every day at work?
Have you never spoken to those people?
Have you ever wondered what kind of stories they have about their work?
Are they curious about you, too?
Milgram asked his students to take pictures of people waiting on the train platform near their homes. Then, weeks passed, and the people waiting for the car got in the car and took the ** to the people they recognized.
As a result, 90% of people recognized at least one "familiar stranger", and the average number of people they could recognize was four. Sixty-two percent have spoken to at least one other passenger, and almost one and a half are curious about the person they are riding with. Undoubtedly, the most familiar strangers are those who used to stand together and wait for the bus.
Milgram has also found that when people see a familiar stranger in an unfamiliar environment, they are more likely to want to talk, for example, if you see someone in another city who has been waiting in the same place before, you may want to talk to him more than when you were waiting for the train at the platform.
5. How likely are two randomly arranged people to know each other. 
Milgram was interested in human connections in human society. He wondered how likely it was that two randomly arranged people would know each other. If they don't know each other, is it possible that one of them knows A, A knows B, B knows C... And so recursively). And then eventually there is a person who knows another of the two people. What is the probability of this?
To study the above questions, he sent a letter to a random person in Nebraska or Boston, and then asked that person to send the letter to someone they thought might know the intended recipient who lived in Massachusetts.
In the end, he found that his letters only took an average of 52 intermediaries. This shows how highly interconnected our society is.
6. You are definitely a person who loves to watch the excitement
Have you ever joined a group of people and didn't know why, but just thought something might be going on and wanted to follow the crowd?
Milgram had a group of people stand on a lively street and look up at the sixth floor of a nearby office block (although nothing happened on the sixth floor) (Milgram et al.)., 1969)。
It was found that 4% of passers-by would stop and look up when one person was doing the above behavior, but 40% would stop and participate if there were already 15 people standing there. In addition, 86% of people pass by at least looking up to see what's really going on above.
7. We only communicate with others superficially, and Milgram believes that the behavior we exhibit in the city is a natural response to information overload. In the city, our senses are constantly under attack. There are many opinions, voices and people waiting for us to process correctly. This is where the advantages and disadvantages of the city lie.
So urbanites try to preserve their mental energy: they only have superficial intersections with others - they frown all the time or look angry.
They always move forward as fast as they can and get everything done. Social details are simply omitted, such as apologizing for accidentally bumping into someone. Because city dwellers don't have any extra energy to process the environment.
One of the city's great rules is anonymity, and the implicit rule is: if you pretend I don't exist, then I also pretend you don't. City dwellers are not bad people (as suggested in the Lost Children study), they just use some rational strategies to deal with the overload of information around them.
Just like MilgrandeAs M once said, we may all be puppets – puppets controlled by the norms of society. But at least we are sentient, conscious puppets. And realizing that this is possible is the first step to liberating ourselves.