In the 1960s, Stanley Milgram, PhD, a Yale psychologist did an experiment that was supposed to study the effects of punishment on learning.

In the experiment, the 'experimenter' told his 'subject' that he was to teach a learner in an adjacent room to memorize a list of word-pairs. Every time the learner made a mistake, the teacher (the subject) was to punish the learner by giving him increasingly severe shocks - administered by pushing levers on a shock machine.

This machine has 30 levers that had shock values ranging from 15 volts (minimum) to 450 volts (maximum).

In reality, no shocks were inflicted on the learner. The "learner" was an actor who pretended to get them. The teach-subjects were not aware of this.

The study found that more than 60 percent of the subjects (the teachers) obeyed that experimenter's commands to continue - despite the "learner's" screams and please to stop. The subjects ended up giving the maximum 450 volts.

Milgram's study showed that our tendency to obey is so strong that many of us willingly obey harmful orders that opposes our moral principles, and do actions that we would not do on our own initiative.

Once we accept the right of an authority figure to control our actions, we pass on the responsibility to him or her, and allow that authority figure to define what is right and wrong for us.

Significance of the study

This study applies to real life 1. by providing a "reference point for some occurrences that are confounding at first look, and thus, make them more plausible.

The implications of this study also help us to understand the Holocaust. For instance, this study may help explain how a Nazi mobile unit traveling the Polish countryside that killed 38,000 Jews in cold blood at the bidding of their commander, concluded that "many of Milgram's insights find graphic confirmation in the behavior and testimony of the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101."

Source: Psychology Matters