The Milgram Experiment: Obedience to Authority

A decade earlier, psychologist Stanley Milgram had also looked at how we respond to authority.

In order to understand how people were induced to obey unjust regimes

and participate in atrocities such as the Holocaust, he set up an experiment.

Volunteers were told they were taking part in scientific research to improve memory.

Would you open those and tell me which of you is which, please?

- Teacher. - Learner. - Teacher. - All right.

Separated by a screen, the teacher would ask the learner questions in a word game

and administer an electric shock when the answer was incorrect.

He was told to increase the voltage with each wrong answer.

Cloud: horse, rock, house. Answer.

[Buzzer] Wrong.

150 volts. Answer: horse.

[Shock] - Ah!

Experimenter, that's all. Get me out of here. Get me out of here, please.

- Continue, please. Go right on. - No, I refuse to go on. Let me out.

- He refuses to go on. - The experiment requires you continue, teacher. Please continue.

Participants didn't know that the learner was really an actor and the so-called shocks, harmless.

You're going to get a shock. 180 volts.

[Shock] - Ow! I can't stand the pain! Let me out of here!

He's in there hollering. I'm not going to kill that man there.

I mean, who's going to take the responsibility if anything happens to that gentleman?

- I'm responsible for anything that happens here. Continue, please.

- All right. Next word: slow. Walk, dance, truck, music. Answer.

Two-thirds of volunteers were prepared to administer a potentially fatal electric shock

when encouraged to do so by what they perceived as a legitimate authority figure—

in this case, a man in a white coat.

375 volts. [Shock]

I think something's happened to that fellow in there. I don't get no answer. He was hollering a while ago.

Hadn't we check in to see if he's all right, please?

Milgram's findings horrified America.

They showed that decent American citizens were as capable of committing acts

against their conscience as the Germans had been under the Nazis.

There's much more to the world than you think, John.