Milgram’s Experiment and its Implications for Human Behaviour

When and under what conditions would destructive obedience, or defiance to authority take place?

Stanley Milgram’s (1963) classic experiment on obedience to authority addressed a significant problem in society: When and under what conditions would destructive obedience, or defiance to the orders of an authority figure take place?

Milgram was interested in “researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person.” He was curious to understand “how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities, for example, Germans in WWII.” (https://simplypsychology.org/milgram.html). Participants were 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, whose jobs ranged from unskilled to professional, from the New Haven area. Two rooms in the Yale Interaction Laboratory were used.

There were 30 switches on the shock generator marked from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 (danger — severe shock), as each participant was told that they would be administering an electrical shock to the subject (though in reality no shock or pulse…