Milgram experiment

n. Stanley Milgram's experiments on obedience to authority, conducted from 1960 to 1963 at Yale University, demonstrated that well-adjusted individuals can be driven to surprising acts of cruelty because of pressure from authority figures. The experimental paradigm consisted of a naive participant asked to deliver increasingly painful electric shocks (none was ever actually given) to a confederate in the guise of a learning study. Despite audible sounds of discomfort and protests from the confederate, the experimenter repeatedly demanded that the participant continue delivering shocks. Although most observers believed that only a very few people would continue until the end of the experiment, 65% of participants delivered the full 450-volt shock levels in the original study. In follow-up studies, Milgram manipulated a number of factors and found that subtle contextual changes in the procedure (e.g., reducing the distance between subject and confederate, removing the experimenter from the room) substantially influenced rates of obedience. The experiments remain among the most famous and controversial in social psychology.

- JAV