Milgram Experiment

Considered one of the most important social psychologists of the 20th century, Stanley Milgram, conducted experiments into the nature of obedience and authority. In his most famous experiment, test subjects believed they were administering electric shocks to subjects who gave wrong answers to a series of questions. At the behest of the scientist controlling the test, each subject increased the voltage to levels that, had electricity really been applied, would have been fatal.

Milgram summarized his findings in "The Perils of Obedience" (1974):

"I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation."

This video, pulled from YouTube, is excerpted from "The Human Behavior Experiments" on Sundance.