ABSTRACT
The problem is two-fold, involving both ethical and logistic components. The Milgram experiments, which hover at the ethical limits of what we are willing to do to respondents, produce only the first step or two toward creating an autonomous, harm-doing individual. The degree to which we are convinced that these sorts of high logistic-high complexity studies tell us important things about socialization into harm doing is exactly the degree to which we are troubled by the ethical issues that they raise. Active role-playing studies can create data about behavior in socialization settings and can contain the variations in independent variables that allow for causal inference. The participant's task consists of making a rapid set of decisions, responding to problems posed in memos requesting instruction from subordinates, communications from peers, and directives from superiors. Baumeister examined many narratives about evil and returned from that examination to remind us of the possibilities that one could take satisfaction.
