Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Study, conducted in the early 1960s at Yale University, is a foundational experiment in social psychology that sought to understand the extent to which individuals would follow orders from an authority figure, even when those orders could harm another person. Motivated by the atrocities of World War II and the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Milgram aimed to explore the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience.

In the experiment, participants were told they were taking part in a study on the effects of punishment on learning. Each participant was assigned the role of a “teacher” and was instructed to administer electric shocks to a “learner” (an actor in another room) for every wrong answer given in a memory test. The shocks were fake, but the “teacher” was led to believe they were real and increased in intensity with each wrong answer. Despite the learners’ (actors) simulated expressions of pain and pleas to stop, many participants continued to administer shocks when instructed by the experiment’s authority figure.

The results were shocking: a significant majority of participants (65%) administered the experiment’s final massive 450-volt shock, despite believing they were causing real pain. Milgram’s study demonstrated the powerful effect of authority on obedience, suggesting that under certain conditions, people would obey authority figures to the extent of committing acts against their personal morals and ethics.

The study raised important ethical questions and sparked debates on the limits of obedience, the power of situational factors over individual morality, and the ethical treatment of participants in psychological research. Milgram’s findings remain profoundly influential in understanding the dynamics of authority and obedience within social structures.

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