( CNN ) -- Two recent incidents have people questioning the basic goodness of humanity . In Washington , a man had a fatal heart attack across the street from a fire station . Passers-by said firefighters refused to help him because they had n't been officially dispatched . At an elementary school in Salt Lake City , staff members seized and discarded children 's lunches because their parents owed money on their accounts . ( School administrators apologized . ) Officials in Washington say they are `` furious '' at the firefighters ' inaction . A mother of one of the students in Utah says she was `` blind-sided '' by the school 's actions , and a state senator says he is `` incredibly disappointed . '' The anger and bewilderment are understandable . But neither incident seems that shocking when considered in light of decades of study of the psychology of obedience and power . Researchers have repeatedly found that allegiance to rules and protocols routinely trumps people 's consciences and sense of basic moral responsibility . Most famously , studies by Stanley Milgram at Yale University in the 1960s found that ordinary people were willing to give what they believed were fatal electric shocks to their partners in a bogus `` memory experiment '' simply because a researcher in a white lab coat told them to . The people supposedly getting shocked ( who were working with Milgram and not being hurt at all ) hollered and pleaded for the shocks to stop , which distressed many of the people administering them , but they kept at it . In fact , roughly two-thirds of the participants kept giving shocks until they had reached the highest voltage level possible , a percentage far higher than Milgram or any of his colleagues anticipated . In a similar vein , the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment run by psychologist Philip Zimbardo took typical Stanford University undergrads and randomly assigned them to be guards or prisoners in a makeshift jail . The guards completely took on their new roles and meted out cruel and sadistic treatment to their `` prisoners . '' The authority they were given and the rules they were asked to enforce blinded them to what was right â€ ” and perhaps the same could be said for those school officials and firefighters . It 's important to keep in mind that the participants in Milgram and Zimbardo 's studies were n't necessarily bad people . They were likely no worse than you or me . They , too , were likely `` blind-sided by the surprisingly strong ways that rules and circumstance can dictate our behavior . While we would like to believe that humanity has evolved since the 1960s , other researchers have achieved similar results in more recent years . Is the upshot of all this that we 're condemned to be unprincipled sheep ? That a few rules and regulations can easily blind us to the better angels of our nature ? Not so fast . The research shows that while external influences on our behavior can be strong , they are not insurmountable . We can overcome these influences simply by becoming more aware of them . One set of studies found that when people attended social psychology lectures explaining how external pressures can inhibit moral behavior , they became less susceptible to those pressures . Other evidence suggests that being reminded of one 's similarities or common humanity with a person in need can motivate us to come to their aid , even when doing so puts ourselves at risk . Perhaps if bystanders ' appeals to those firefighters had struck a more personal chord with them , they might have been jarred into action . Finally , throughout history , we have seen examples of people who displayed great altruism , even heroism , while most everyone around them remained bystanders to evil â€ ” or perpetrators of it . Some evidence suggests that the roots of this caring behavior extend back into childhood . A seminal study by Samuel and Pearl Oliner suggests that one commonality of people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust was that their parents nurtured empathy in them , such as by encouraging them to see the world from other points of view and emphasizing the universal similarity of people . Indeed , the childhood roots of altruism were evoked by another story in the news this week : the story of 10-year-old Danny DiPietro , who noticed that something seemed awry in a neighbor 's garage and pressured his mother to investigate . Despite his mother 's resistance , Danny persisted until his mother agreed to walk down the street . She found an 80-year-old neighbor who had slipped , could n't get up , and likely would have died had she spent much more time trapped outside in the freezing cold . Rather than remaining quiet or succumbing to the pressure not to make waves , Danny stayed attuned to his moral instinctsâ€ ” '' something just did n't feel right , '' he said . Sometimes it 's nice to be reminded that while sensing what 's right can get complicated by adult rules and regulations , it can still come naturally to kids . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jason Marsh .
Jason Marsh : Stories of school lunches grabbed from parents , man ignored by rescuers draw shock . How does this happen ? Studies show people all too blindly obey rules , authority , he says . Marsh : It 's surmountable . People can be stripped of humanity , taught empathy . Marsh : Story of boy , on his own accord , calls mom to check on fallen , gives hope .