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...

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…