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After the revelations of the Nuremberg trials, a common assumption held by many Americans was that there must be something abnormal or pathological about the character of individuals who were capable of such atrocities. Surely good, moral, normal people would never follow such destructive orders. Almost twenty years after Nuremberg, a social psychologist named Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments that challenged the assumption that only "bad" people commit atrocities.
Milgram, then a professor at Yale University, used newspaper ads to recruit male residents of nearby New Haven, Connecticut, to participate in his experiments. These individuals were initially deceived about the true purpose of the study; they were simply told that they were to be involved in a study of the effects of punishment on human learning. The men were brought into a laboratory room in pairs, where Milgram assigned one to play the role of a "teacher" and the other was designated as the "learner." After the learner had an opportunity to study a list of word pairs, the teacher was instructed to test his recall of the words. If the learner failed to recall one of the word pairs, it was the teacher's job to punish him by administering a painful electrical shock. The teacher and the learner were in adjacent rooms and communicated through an intercom system. The shocks used as punishment were ostensibly administered by means of a large apparatus on a table in front of the teacher. The electrical shocks were apparently controlled by a series of switches labeled with corresponding voltages; the switches started with 15 volts (labeled "Slight Shock") on the far left, increasing in 15 volt steps until ending up at 450 volts (labeled "Danger: Severe Shock") on the extreme right. After each error by the learner, the teacher was instructed to flip a switch to deliver a shock, and then move up to the next higher voltage when the next error occurred. |
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