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- YALE UNIVERSITY1960s
- I have devised an experiment to focus on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience.
- I am John Milgram
- Experimenter
- Teacher
- Learner
- In 1961 and inspired after examining the justifications of genocide acts in World War II from the Nuremberg War Criminal trials, Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, carried out an experiment which focused on discovering how obedient an individual would be under the instruction of an authoritative figure in regards to harming another person.
- When the learner gives a wrong answer, administer an electric shock
- Increase the level of shock each time
- OK
- Often the explanation that was given for the Nazi killings in World War II was explained by Germans being especially obedient to those in authority and Milgram decided to explore this. He selected 40 male participants age between 20-50 with jobs ranging from unskilled to professional to take part in his research.
- SHOCK GENERATOR30 switches from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 volts (severe shock - danger)
- For each study, Milgram paired a participant with one of his colleagues who was pretending to be a participant. They drew lots to decide who would be the ‘learner’ and the ‘teacher.’ However the draw was fixed and the participant was always the teacher. The 'experimenter' was an actor, although this was unknown to the participant.
- Please continue
- The experiment requires you to continue
- It is absolutely essential that you continue
- Now it is too much !!
- The learner was strapped to a chair with electrodes in another room and given a set of word pairs to learn. The teacher was instructed to test him by giving a word and requesting the correct word pair. Every time the leaner made a mistake, the teacher was was told to administer a shock using an electric shock generator.
- The teacher was ordered to increase the level of electric shock in 15v intervals for each consecutive wrong answer. There were 30 switches on the shock generator which were marked from 15v (slight shock) to 450v (danger – severe shock). As the learner gave mainly wrong answers, the intensity of shocks increased quickly. Many of the teachers exhibited signs of great stress whilst taking part in the study.
- If the teacher refused to administer a shock, the experimenter gave prompts or orders. If one was not adhered to then the next one was read out in sequence as required. Results showed that 65% of participants continued to the highest level of 450 volts and all continued to 300 volts. Milgram concluded that most people will follow instructions when the order comes from a person in authority.
- You have no other choice but to continue
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