In reading Born to be good I found it very interesting to see what makes us feel good, bad or indifferent toward others? A research study performed by Kitzinger (1997) which discusses the psychology of morality. One of the items discussed in the essay is "that people commonly care for sick relatives, give money to help famine victims, donate blood to hospitals, or volunteer to assist at hospices" (p. 375). I totally agree with this statement.
Our society as a whole does not like to see individuals suffer from pain, heartache, or anything that makes one suffer. There are many acts of kindness that go unnoticed and they may benefit many people and they are not aware of the acts of kindness. When we are kids growing up and we are hurt or in pain the first thing a mother or father wants to do is say I will kiss it and make it better. Children relate to that because the mom or dad is paying attention to them in their time of need. A study by Stanley Milgram, which asked individuals to sit at a shock machine and administer up to 450 volts to people, called "learners". The study indicated that even though we has humans believed that hurting someone was wrong and even complaining to the instructor about the experiment. Almost, all of the individuals when order to continue with the shock machine did as they were instructed. The study showed that we would knuckle under to pressure and demands, with great regularity. This experiment as I read it was to show how individuals react to someone suffering, but it also showed that even though the individual who is getting shocked and there was pain involved we continued to up the volts as mistakes were made. Does this mean that as a society we should continue with an experiment eventhough an individual is suffering with pain? I should hope not and that someone would just stop the experiment, but as we continued to read that is not what happened.
