The Milgram experiment(s) on obedience to authority figures was a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram. They measured the willingness of study participants, men from a diverse range of occupations with varying levels of education, to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience. Participants were led to believe that they were assisting an unrelated experiment, in which they had to administer electric shocks to a "learner." These fake electric shocks gradually increased to levels that would have been fatal had they been real.

40 male participants aged between 20-50 years Volunteer sample obtained from newspaper advertisements for a study on memory Participant paired with a confederate. Participant was always the 'teacher' and confederate was always the 'leaner' Actor was pretending to be the experimenter, who was dressed in a white lab coat to enforce the idea of im having legitimate authority The confederate would consistently give the wrong answer then cry out when the 'electric shock' was given

If the participant asked advice, the actor used a series of predetermined 'verbal prods' to encourage them to continue

No participants stopped below 300v 12.5% stapped AT 300v 65% shocked all the way up to 450%, compared to Milgram's predicted 3%

3 participants had stress induced seizures, and the rest showed signs of sweating and trembling