If you are ever placed into a situation psychologically and ethically analogous to these experiments--a possibility that in a militarized and capitalist world it seems wise not to dismiss--and you want to acquit yourself better, what can you do? One option is to just have faith that you'll turn out to be an exceptionally good person. But that doesn't seem to me to be much wiser than assuming that no one with authority will ever encourage you to do something wrong. I think a better option, per the OP, is to think seriously in advance about what kind of situations might arise in your actual life and how you would like yourself to respond.
Classically, I respond to this line of thinking - the doubt of being an exceptionally "good" person - with the following self-assessed metric:
"If you were raised in the deep South during the 18th and 19th centuries, would you be aggressively racist, ambivalent or abolitionist in your views towards Black enslavement?"
The immediate gut feeling that people feel is important, because it doesn't end there. You then ask if that gut feeling can be reasoned to be consistent with their behavior, or if it's just a feel-good response. If someone really feels they'd be abolitionist, this should be at least somewhat reflected in small examples of day to day behavior. People don't reserve "goodness" for large deeds, they are usually the kind of people who help out in small, less noticeable/outspoken ways as well.
NB: This is not a test designed to prove how good someone is to another person, it's a self-assessment. It's asked to help the person learn more about themselves.
If you are ever placed into a situation psychologically and ethically analogous to these experiments--a possibility that in a militarized and capitalist world it seems wise not to dismiss--and you want to acquit yourself better, what can you do? One option is to just have faith that you'll turn out to be an exceptionally good person. But that doesn't seem to me to be much wiser than assuming that no one with authority will ever encourage you to do something wrong. I think a better option, per the OP, is to think seriously in advance about what kind of situations might arise in your actual life and how you would like yourself to respond.