Oral exposition
One of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology was carried out by
Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University. He conducted an
experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and
personal conscience.
Milgram (1963) examined justifications for acts of genocide offered by those
accused at the World War II, Nuremberg War Criminal trials. Their defense
often was based on "obedience" - that they were just following orders from
their superiours.
The experiments began in July 1961, a year after the trial of Adolf
Eichmann in Jerusalem.
Milgram selected participants for his experiment by newspaper
advertising for male participants to take part in a study of learning
at Yale University.5
The procedure was that the participant was paired with another
person and they drew lots to find out who would be the ‘learner’
and who would be the ‘teacher.’5 The draw was fixed so that the
participant was always the teacher, and the learner was one of
Milgram’s confederates (pretending to be a real participant). The
learner (a confederate called Mr. Wallace) was taken into a room
and had electrodes attached to his arms, and the teacher and
researcher went into a room next door that contained an electric
shock generator and a row of switches marked from 15 volts (Slight
Shock) to 375 volts (Danger: Severe Shock) to 450 volts (XXX).
The “learner” (Mr. Wallace) was strapped to a chair with electrodes.
After he has learned a list of word pairs given him to learn, the
"teacher" tests him by naming a word and asking the learner to
recall its partner/pair from a list of four possible choices.
The teacher is told to administer an electric shock every time the
learner makes a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time.
The learner gave mainly wrong answers (on purpose), and for each
of these, the teacher gave him an electric shock. When the teacher
refused to administer a shock, the experimenter was to give a
series of orders/prods to ensure they continued.
65% (two-thirds) of participants (i.e., teachers) continued to the
highest level of 450 volts. All the participants continued to 300
volts.
