Research into obedience

• Milgram's shock study (1963)


  Lab experiment with 40 participants, where participants were told it was a study of how punishment affects learning
• Participants


  • 2 confederates: experimenter, and the 'learner'
  • Roles were 'randomly assigned', but this was rigged, the real participant would always end up as the 'teacher'
• Experiment procedure


  1. The teacher would test the learner on their ability to remember word pairs

  2. Every time the learner got it wrong the teacher would administer an electric shock—starting at 15V, and going up to 450V (labelled 'danger') in 15V increments

  3. If the teacher stopped at any point the experimenter would 'prod' them to continue
• Prior to the study, college students and colleagues predicted that very few would go above 150V, and only 1 in 1000 would administer the full 450V
• 65% continued to maximum shock level
• ALL participants went to 300V-with only 12.5% stopping at this point