Milgram's Obedience Experiment

Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments, conducted at Yale University in 1963, are among the most famous and disturbing studies in the history of psychology. They demonstrated that ordinary people, under the direction of an authority figure, would administer what they believed were dangerous and painful electric shocks to an innocent person — simply because they were told to do so.

The experimental setup was deceptively simple. Participants believed they were taking part in a study about learning and memory. They were assigned the role of "teacher" and told to administer electric shocks to a "learner" (actually a confederate) whenever they answered a question incorrectly. The shocks increased in 15-volt increments from 15V ("Slight Shock") to 450V ("XXX — Danger: Severe Shock"). The learner, in a separate room, would cry out in pain, beg to stop, and eventually fall silent. Despite their obvious distress, 65% of participants continued to the maximum 450-volt shock when prompted by the experimenter with phrases like "The experiment requires you to continue."

Milgram designed the study to understand the Holocaust — how ordinary Germans could participate in genocide. His results suggested the answer was not that perpetrators were uniquely evil, but that obedience to authority is a deeply ingrained human tendency. Participants who obeyed reported extreme stress — sweating, trembling, nervous laughter — but the social pressure of a perceived legitimate authority overrode their personal moral judgment. The study revealed what Milgram called the "agentic state": when people see themselves as instruments of another person's will, they feel diminished responsibility for their own actions.