Milgram experiment

In 1961 , Stanley Milgram conducted a groundbreaking (in both a psychological and ethical sense ) experiment at Yale University aimed at testing the capacity of individuals to conform to authority in taking actions that would harm other people . The results of Milgram 's experiment were chilling : ordinary people could very easily be convinced to inflict tremendous pain on another human being simply by being told to do so by an authority figure

Milgram set up the experiment as follows . He and an actor were in on the true ' nature of the experiment . Two

people would enter Milgram 's office - one would be an actor hired by Milgram (though the actor would pretend to be an ordinary participant ) and the other would be the test subject , who had responded to a news ad advertising the experiment and offering financial compensation in return for participation . The two would then take lots (rigged to ensure that the participant got the job of experimenter ) and they would separate , with the actor dubbed as the learner of the test , even though the reality was inverted . Milgram told the experimenter - the true subject - that he or she was to read word pairs to the learner and that they would test whether or not the learner could remember the associations . If the word pairing was incorrect , the experimenter would be told to administer an electric shock to the learner at increasingly high levels of voltage . If the word pairing was given correctly , the experimenter would continue on until...