In the 1960s, Yale University psychology professor Stanley Milgram conducted what is now famously known as the “Milgram Experiment” to study the degree to which people will obey authority—even if that means going against one’s better judgment and good conscious.
For those not familiar with the controversial Milgram Experiment, it went like this: People who volunteered for the experiment thought they were taking part in a study on learning and memory. As part of the study, the volunteer “teacher” would read out words to the “learner,” who was hooked up to an electric-shock machine in the next room over. Each time the learner made a mistake in repeating the words, the teacher was ordered by “authority” to administer an electric shock of increasing intensity, going all the way up to 450 volts (labeled as “Danger: severe shock” on the machine).
