Obedience – Administering Electric Shock

Do you recall hearing or reading about Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments in 1963? One of the most famous of studies? His well-known experiments—the stuff of legend as one person described them--were designed to test obedience to authority (Milgram, 1963). He crafted his obedience experiments in an effort to identify how far human beings will actually go when an authority figure orders them to hurt another human being. In his original experiments Milgram reported that 63% of the participants continued to administer all the shocks demanded of them even with the other individual (an actor) “screamed in agony.” Interestingly enough, one study found that Australian women were much less obedient. More tomorrow.

http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fh0040525