Milgram's Obedience Study MILGRAM'S1 Obedience Study Conducted

Milgram's Obedience Study Milgram's1 obedience study conducted in 1961 and 1962 examined the response of individuals to outright commands. The experiment conducted at Yale University has become one of the most controversial experiments ever conducted. The experiment revealed the tremendous amount of pain that human beings were capable of placing on other human beings when commanded to do so by an authority figure. Milgram conducted a total of 20 experiments involving 1000 participants. Participants were told that the study would examine the effect of punishment on learning.

They were studied in groups of two, one individual was the "teacher" and the other was the "learner." "The learner was led to an adjoining room and strapped into a chair that is wired to a wall to an electric shock machine."2 The "teacher" was then told to sit in front of the machine which had switches marked with different voltage levels. The teacher was instructed to teach and test the learner on a group of word pairs.

The teacher was then told by the experimenter to punish the learner with an electric shock if the wrong answer was given. The amount of electric shock ranged from 15 volts to 450 volts. Every time the "learner" gave the incorrect answer the voltage of electric shock was increased.

During the course of the experiment, the experimenter prods the "teacher" into administering the shock even after hearing the cries and the pleas of the "learner." The purpose of the experiment was to see how much electric shock the "teachers" would administer to the "learners" under the direction of the experimenters. The "learners" were actually actors that were pretending that they were being shocked. However, the "teachers" thought that the "learners" were actually being shocked. Milgram surveyed the participants before conducting the experiment.

The majority of the participants claimed that they would not continue with the experiment if the "learner" appeared to be in pain. Milgram also surveyed several psychologists before the experiment was conducted. They all believed that most of the participants would not continue to administer shock if they knew that the "learner" was in pain. Conclusions Milgram was surprised to find that 65% of the participants were willing to inflict pain at the command of an experimenter.

They were willing to do this in spite of the fact that the victim hadn't done anything to deserve it and had no way of escaping. Milgram found that as the experiment continued the subjects seemed to believe that the punishment was justifiable. Milgram concluded that, "ordinary people, simply doing their jobs and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process." 3 Theories that sprang from the Research One of the main theories that sprang from the research was Milgram's Theory of Obedience.