A lot of muslims, not all muslims have a deep seated hatred of infidels-basically anyone who is not muslim.

This is brainwashed into them at a very young age and continues throughout there lifetime.

They are able to brainwash kids because they are young and impressionable.
Like any discrimination, if you get to a person when they are young and constantly preach it, it's very hard for a person to kick this type of thinking out of their mind if it is what they have bee taught their whole life.
It takes a special person to be able to discount something they have been taught their whole life and really not be prejudiced from what they have been taught.

Stanley Milgram may disagree with your theory that you can't be "coaxed".

http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/milgram_obedience_experiment.html

In the right coniditions, all human beings are brutal and nasty.

I don't take Milgram very seriously because the test was performed in a university psych lab

Actually the experiment was repeated recently with a puppy the students could see and kept zapping the poor dog while crying hysterical tears. So if you give deference to authority you will do what you are told. The mistake you are making Amy is that you assume everyone has the same attitude to authority as you or I do: Yes yes sure until you tell me to do something I find repugnant then kiss my ass. There was another experiment with volunteers simulating a prion experiment that quite nicely backs up Milgrams assertions.

The thing I always wondered about that experiment - how many people just liked inflicting pain and just claimed defference to athourity?

History bears out that if you have a high regard for authority and the journey into genocide is gradual most people will at least go along for the ride if not actively participate. The Inquisition, Holocaust and the Balkan war genocides are some examples. Most of the Catholics, Germans and Serbs were not evil but loyal to the the wrong people, and easily lead. Not to say there wasn't resistance to all of these. Some of us are just wired differently.

Milgram's famous experiment did not involve students as research subjects:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Milgram_Experiment_advertising.gif

I also disdain the need to come up with a statistic (one out of four!) to describe a problem

You have to come up with some level of the prevalence of a given problem before you decide to pursue it. You do however need to actually come up with valid stats not just out of ass guesses as to prevalence.

"Leave the lab factor" problem solved...

"Where the experiment was conducted in a nondescript office building rather than within the walls of a prestigiously ornate hall on Yale's old campus the percentage of subjects who were prepared to administer the maximum voltage dropped to 47.5%. "

This does suggest that venue is important to the study but I would imagine this actualy adds credence to the theory. You "obey" authority when in a situation that you are supposed to.

To add to vlads point, a good dose of "necessity" is also good when it comes to leading people down the wrong path. Poor and frightened people will obey an authority figure quicker than well-to-do people who need nothing.

I'm speaking generally, Cheez, about one of the factors I consider.

It's worth considering in some experiments, but fewer than people think. Particularly if a within-subjects design is used, it often doesn't matter if the subjects (ahem, participants) are students or if it's done in a lab. If you assume a normal distribution of a behavior tendency within the population, then all you need is a decent sample size and random assignment to achieve a sufficiently representative sample to get accurate results. The central limit theorem is pretty useful in that way.

"Where the experiment was conducted in a nondescript office building rather than within the walls of a prestigiously ornate hall on Yale's old campus the percentage of subjects who were prepared to administer the maximum voltage dropped to 47.5%. "

This is still a high level of compliance. If you didn't know how high compliance was in this experiment, I'm guessing you'd think a vast majority would stop well before delivering supposedly dangerous voltages. Milgram's and Zimbardo's work both show how far people will push the envelope of decent behavior if the circumstances are right.

Amy,

Both Suki and I had the same type of reaction to this the other day (see our blog from 5/30/09).

Worse for me because of that woman I wrote to you about last week or so.

Lots of Americans get coaxed into blowing people up. The Americans are just better organized about it.