Hello! Today’s blog is focused on the Milgram Shock Experiment conducted by psychologist Stanley Milgram at Yale University. It’s best known for its conflict between compliance to authority and personal conscience. 

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOYLCy5PVgM

Back in 1963, Milgram examined the trial of Adolf Eichmann which caused a hypothesis to arise about the Holocaust. Milgram wanted to know if the reason for the killings in World War II was simply because Germans were obedient towards those in command. In order to conduct this experiment, Milgram put an advertisement in a newspaper that asked for male participants to engage in a study. Each volunteer was told that the purpose of the experiment was to examine the effects of punishment on learning abilities. Also a reward was guaranteed at the end for participation. What everyone didn’t know was that the experiment was rigged! To better explain, the participants were paired with another individual in which a ‘raffle’ was done to see who would act as the ‘learner’ and ‘teacher’ of the experiment. However, Milgram fixed the draw which caused the participants to be the teacher while the ‘learner’ pretended to be an actual participant. The ‘learner’ in the experiment was taken into another room with electrodes attached to their upper limbs. On the other hand, the ‘teacher’ ( participants) were kept in another room with an electric shock generator that had extremely high voltage. 15 volts being a light shock and 375 volts being the top, severe shock. Next, it was Milgram’s job duty to see just how far the participants would go when it comes to obeying orders from a superior even if it means hurting another individual. To get the study started, the ‘learner’ was given a list of paired words to recall. The participants also known as the teachers were then told to name a word from the list in which the ‘learner’ would respond with the word’s pair. Each mistake results in a shock and every time the shock would increase. The ‘learner’ purposely gave incorrect answers to see what the ‘teacher’ would do. If the teacher refused to do something, they were forced to continue the experiment. After everything was observed, Milgram noted that approximately ⅔ or 65% of the participants continued the experiment all the way until they reached 450 volts. Adding to that, all of the participants reached 300 volts. These results showed that many people are likely to comply with orders given by an authority figure even when someone else is put under danger. His hypothesis was proven also through several other studies that he conducted after the fact. I thought this was an interesting experiment that revealed how the average human acts towards higher authority regardless of the circumstances. 

Sources Used:

Stanley Milgram Shock Experiment

https://www.verywellmind.com/the-milgram-obedience-experiment-2795243