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Originally Posted by GP_Matt
I am still confused about how the thread title relates to the Milgram experiment.
What does a willingness to follow an authority figure have to do with overly nice people?
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The second paragraph of the link is really what should have been quoted in the OP:
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The news: A new Milgram-like experiment published this month in the Journal of Personality has taken this idea to the next step by trying to understand which kinds of people are more or less willing to obey these kinds of orders. What researchers discovered was surprising: Those who are described as "agreeable, conscientious personalities" are more likely to follow orders and deliver electric shocks that they believe can harm innocent people, while "more contrarian, less agreeable personalities" are more likely to refuse to hurt others.
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I don't think it's that surprising that someone who is generally agreeable is more likely to follow orders without question than someone who is generally contrarian. A person who is likely to say no when someone suggests a restaurant they don't like isn't likely to gladly accept an order to torture someone for no reason (now, if it's the person who suggested the bad restaurant, that's another story).
I'd say that the problem isn't really that these people are too nice, it's that they're yes-men who are so eager for the approval of the authority figure that they don't question their instructions.
It's unfortunate that the person who questions authority is considered "not nice". What this really confirms is the old saying that when someone asks your opinion on a subject, they don't really want your honest opinion, they just want to hear their own opinion in a different voice.