The Milgram Experiment
The Milgram Study is a study of social obedience and human interaction with authority figures and conformity. The study began in July of 1961, and was conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram. The date the experiment began hold some historical significance – it is three months after the trial of German Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann began. As stated, the experiment was to study the interactions humans have with authority figures, but the trial inspired Milgram to steer the study in a specific direction: just how much power does authority have over humans, when the actions being asked of them go against their conscious of what is considered right, wrong, or even humane.
If you were a participant in the study, you were given the title of “teacher.” You would be introduced to a “student” to whom you would be asking several word association questions. The people conducting the study would explain to you, that every time the student answered a question incorrectly, you were to inflict a shock before moving on to the next question. Every time a shock was inflicted, the next wrong answer would require you to give a shock of an even higher voltage. You would then be taken to another room – so that you could no longer see the student, only hear them – and sat down in front of an impressive looking instrument that had levers for each voltage level. You would ask the question via a microphone and then be instructed by the conductor how much voltage each wrong questions should yield.
If you were the “teacher,” or the subject of this experiment, what you did not know was that everyone else involved was merely an actor. The entire purpose of the experiment was to see how you, as the “teacher” would react to authority instructed you to inflict increasingly stronger, and stronger shocks to a fellow human being. Basically, whether or not you would conform to what your authority figure was telling you was “normal” procedure. Surprisingly, most of the participants were totally okay inflicting minor, to mid-range shocks to there “students.” Once the teachers started to hear