History is dominated by tyrants who have inflicted appalling acts of cruelty and carried out horrific atrocities.
Most people believe that only truly evil leaders can be so ruthless.
But, in Five Steps to Tyranny , Sheena McDonald reveals that each and every person is capable of committing terrible acts against fellow human beings. This powerful and disturbing documentary features a number of ground-breaking psychological experiments, and conducts a few new tests of its own in order to prove how easily people obey orders and do harm to others. Prompted by the death of Martin Luther King, Jane Elliott, an Iowa schoolteacher, investigated the basis of prejudice by separating her class into blue and brown-eyed children. Shown in the programme, the results of creating 'in' and 'out' groups speak for themselves in the immediate and intense reactions of the pupils. In another experiment, programme-makers ask travellers to give up their seats on trains and most people agree.