[SatvikBeri]

People react wildly differently in different circumstances. This has been proven over and over. The Milgram experiment was heavily designed to influence how people act. A twist in circumstances can easily get 100% of people to do the "right" thing. If you only look at extreme cases like this, you won't get an accurate idea of human behavior.

I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of people, in normal circumstances, are essentially good.

[AretNCarlsen]

Certainly, you can get nearly 100% of people to do the right thing most of the time. That is what judicial deterrents accomplish. Those don't work if people are anonymous, however.

The Milgram experiment was not intended to be "extreme". They expected less than 3% of participants to actually torture their (fake) victim to death. The U.S. group was to act as a control, such that they could proceed to compare results in Germany, for instance, where the Holocaust had so recently occurred. Following the unexpected American results, Milgram simply did not bother to perform the actual intended experiment in Germany.

[jamesbritt]

Every day I see people act nice and behave well even though it would be trivial to be a dick or a thief with no appreciable consequences.

In real life, under ordinary conditions, most people simply act decent and it does not seem to be fear of punishment.