The
Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of
social psychology experiments conducted by
Yale University psychologist
Stanley Milgram. They measured the willingness of study participants, men from a diverse range of occupations with varying levels of education, to
obey an
authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal
conscience. Participants were led to believe that they were assisting an unrelated experiment, in which they had to administer electric shocks to a "learner." These fake electric shocks gradually increased to levels that would have been fatal had they been real.
[2]
The experiment found, unexpectedly, that a very high proportion of men would fully obey the instructions, albeit reluctantly. Milgram first described his
research in a 1963 article in the
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology[1] and later discussed his findings in greater depth in his 1974 book,
Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.[3]
The experiments began in July 1961, in the basement of Linsly-Chittenden Hall at Yale University,
[4] three months after the start of the trial of German
Nazi war criminalAdolf Eichmann in
Jerusalem. Milgram devised his psychological study to answer the popular contemporary question: "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in
the Holocaust were
just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?"
[5] The experiment was repeated many times around the globe, with fairly consistent results.
[6]
