 How can a regular person be talked into committing heinous acts upon another? And could you be convinced to potentially injure or kill someone else? I'm not talking about self-defense or during war on the battlefield, but someone you have never met before and have had no interaction with previously. How can perfectly normal people commit genocide? Like what we saw in the 1930s and 1940s in Europe, or even in Cambodia in the 1970s amongst other events. What causes people to be active participants in crimes against humanity? If we take Germany in the 1930s as an example, what caused a large part of a modern country to be willing in crimes against people that have been their neighbours and community members for years? It is a really fascinating thought experiment, as when you think to yourself I could never do something like this or even this. But what would it actually take for you to pull trigger, push a button or pull a lever? Well this is where a psychologist set out to see what would be the minimum amount of suggestion for a regular person to administer a potentially deadly electric shock to someone they have never met before. The simple but effective study would be known by the inventor's name, the Milgram experiment. The actual experiment would not result in any physical pain, but extreme stress and inflicted insight to the participants. And this would create controversy with the study. As such I'm going to rate it here five on my ethics scale. This is mainly due to it being a fascinating dive into our hard-wired ability to obey an authority figure even to the point of murder. Welcome to the dark side of science. Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist born on the 15th of August 1933 in the Bronx, New York. His parents were Jewish and have fled Romania and Hungary during the First World War. His background and family ties to Europe would have an important effect on his later studies into social psychology. As word came back to the Milgram family during the late 30s and 40s of the atrocities inflicted by the Nazi regime. Although in relative safety in the USA, many of Stanley's family members were directly affected by the Holocaust. After the war some surviving members of the family came to stay whilst finding a new life in the US. A young Stanley was exposed to the horrors experienced by his relatives and this would stay with him, igniting an interest into the darker side of human nature. In 1954 Milgram received his bachelor's degree in political science from Queens College in New York. Initial applications to Harvard for psychology masters were rejected but was eventually admitted. The initial setbacks were due to Milgram not taking any undergraduate courses in psychology at Queens College. In 1961 Milgram received a PhD in social psychology. He became an assistant professor at Yale around the same time. Later on he served as an assistant professor in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard from 1963 to 1966 and this brings us very quickly onto his obedient study more commonly known as the Milgram experiment. Stanley's experience of relatives going through the Holocaust coupled with the arrest and trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 sparked an interest into finding out what could make seemingly average people take part in atrocities. Eichmann organised the logistics of the deportation of Jews during the Holocaust. He made deportation plans down to the last detail. Working with other German agencies he also determined how the property of deported Jews would be seized. What was interesting about the trial was that he claimed he had not dictated policy but only carried it out and that he was merely a cog in the machinery of destruction. Essentially the I was only following orders defence. This highlights the question that is following an order enough to convince someone to do something so heinous. Milgram would later say in 1974 when explaining the experiment could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders could we call them all accomplices? The experiment was pretty simple and would make use of three people the experimenter who was in charge of the session the teacher a volunteer for a single session and a learner. Both the teacher and learner would arrive for the session together and they would draw straws as to who would take each role. Participants were sourced via a newspaper ad saying we will pay you for one hour of your time in a study of memory. The teacher and learner after finding out their roles were taken into a room where the learner was strapped into what appeared to be an electric chair and electrode paste was applied to the learner's wrist to prevent blistering and burns. The teacher would hear this being explained and see this happen. The experimenter who was dressed in a lab coat in order to appear to have more authority told the participants that restraints was to ensure that the learner would not escape. The teacher was allowed to experience a sample electric shock similar to what the learner would feel. Before beginning the experiment the volunteers were informed that they would be paid regardless of the outcome thus removing any financial incentive to any results. The teacher was led into another room where they could not see the learner but could hear them and the experiment would begin. The teacher was then given a list of word pairs that he was to teach the learner. The teacher would then read the first word of each pair and read four possible answers. The learner would press a button to show his answer. If incorrect the teacher was meant to administer a shock to the learner. If correct the teacher would read the next pair of words. Each subsequent incorrect answer would mean the teacher had to increase the voltage in 15 volt increments. They were also instructed to announce the voltage before shocking the learner. Pretty cruel you might think but there was only one actual volunteer in each test, the teacher who unbeknownst to them was the real test subject. You see the learner was actually a stooge and wasn't receiving an electrical shock and the chance drawing a straw was to find out who would do either role was actually fixed meaning the teacher would always be the teacher also probably not surprising the experimenter was also in on it. This meant that the whole experience of the teacher was controlled from the authority of the experimenter to the reaction of the learner. To ramp things up in later versions of the study the learner would also shout out in pain when the voltage got too high. The experiment would have a preliminary and a regular run. The first was a practice of sorts where the learner would get three correct answers and seven incorrect ones which would yield a shock up to 105 volts. The second or regular run the teacher would be told to read off a list of words and had to continue repeating it until the learner had gotten all of the pairs correct. The volt dial range from 15 to 450 volts and to add further explanation for the teacher was labelled slight shock to danger severe shock. About 300 volts the learner would kick on the wall and then no longer give answers to the teacher's multiple choice questions. If the teacher showed any hesitation the experimenter was able to give one of four prodding responses in sequence. The first was please continue or please go on followed by the experiment requires that you to continue and then it is absolutely essential that you continue and finally you have no other choice you must go on. The experimenter could only progress to the next prod if the teacher refused. If all four responses were reached then the experiment would end if not it would continue all the way up to 450 volts. If the teacher asked any specific questions the experimenter could reply for example will the shock leave any permanent damage. The experimenter could then reply with although shocks can be extremely painful they cause no permanent damage. After the experiment an interview would be undertaken and the question how painful do you think the last few shocks you administered were. The teachers were instructed to indicate their answer on a scale between one to 14 after which the teacher was reintroduced to the learner and the experiment was fully explained. The experiments began in July 1961 at Yale University and 40 subjects would volunteer through this newspaper advert and the results would surprise all predictions. The 40 men were from a cross-section in society from various different age and career groups ranging from 20 to 50. During the experiment most test subjects showed signs of severe distress when administering the electric shock. They observed sweating, trembling, stuttering, biting their lips, groaning and digging their fingernails into their own skin. The discomfort seen shown that the subjects were aware of the pain the learner was experiencing. Pre-experiment it was expected that only a small amount of the subjects would administer the high-voltage shock between one and three percent but this prediction would be way off. Of the 40 subjects all reached 300 volts at which the learner would bang on the wall and stop giving answers. Only five refused to go beyond this point. Four more went on to shock the learner one more time and then also refused. Two stopped at the 330 volt level and one each at 345, 360 and 375 volts respectively meaning that only 14 refused the experimenter's prods. This meant that 26 proceeded all the way to the end giving the highest available shock to the learner although most showed signs of discomfort and stress they still obeyed the perceived authority of a guy in a white lab coat. The results were understandably unexpected as from a young age we are taught to not hurt others but with the addition of an authority figure the teacher would abandon this fundamental part of their moral fabric. Scarily there was no punishment for disobeying the experimenter nor was there any reward for completing the experiment as payment was assured from the start. Even more strange was the results were similar when a control study was undertaken with 43 unpaid students. In Milgram's paper into the study he highlighted several particular conditions of the experiment that might have contributed to the high level of about 65 percent of compliance to the highest voltage level. The fact that the study was being undertaken at and sponsored by Yale possibly reassured subjects that the experiment was aboveboard and reputable. The perceived randomness of the selection of learner and teacher also could have factored in as the teacher may have thought that he could have been in the other chair hence he was exposed to the same risks. The subject may have also have thought that as he had volunteered that he was obligated to help the experimenter and to the same extent that the learner had also submitted to the authority of the experiment. The subjects were also reassured that although painful the shocks were not deadly and that compliance was built through to shock level 20 when the learner would no longer reply. To refuse would cause a conflict situation where the wants of the learner and the experimenter were at odds with one another and decide would the experimenter was the path of least resistance so to speak. The short duration that the experiment ran for meant that the teacher had less time to think about the actions resulting in little time for reflection. Milgram would repeat the experiment in several variations to see if any of the conditions change would yield different results. Even when Milgram conducted the experiment in an unregistered office far away from Yale the results were fairly similar. Now to the ethical question was the experiment cruel? Well in my opinion no but it can leave long term distress to the teacher especially if they administered the full shock. For many the experience left self-reflection on how they had submitted to the authority of the experimenter. Ethical criticism came from the allowed discomfort of the test subjects where even though they had provided their consent the experiment should have been paused when the distress was observed. However in his 1974 book Obedience to Authority an experimental view pushed back on his detractors saying that the ethical criticism provoked by his experiments was because his findings were disturbing and revealed unwelcome truths about human nature. It is really open to debate as whether the experiment was ethical or not but regardless it was a fascinating dive into human nature. The study would later be compared with another controversial experiment run by one of Milgram's friends, Philip George Zimbardo at Stanford. But that will be a subject for another video. Thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed the video. This video is a plain difficult production. All videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed. Plain difficult videos are produced by me John in a sunny southeastern corner of London UK. Help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing and check out my Twitter for all sorts of photos, nods and sods as well as hints on future videos. 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