This experiment pitted moral belief against the demands of authority. I've included this experiment on my webpage because it demonstrates the stupidity that we live among.

The experiment involves three people. Two are psychologists. The third is the subject. However, the subject only knows that one of the psychologists an actual doctor. The other psychologist pretends to be another subject. The actual subject believes that he/she is there to help in a experiment on "punishment and learning." They draw straws that were actually rigged so that the subject would always become the "teacher" in the experiment. The other psychologist is the "learner." The learner goes into another room where he is tied down and strapped with electodes. The "teacher" is responsible for administering shocks of electicity for every wrong answer the "learner" gives. The "teacher" sits in front of a control panel that controls the electric voltage and is seperated from the "learner" so that they can only hear each other through a thin wall. The psychologist then begins asking questions. The "learner" answers them correctly, but then starts to get them wrong on purpose. As a result, the "teacher" anministers small shocks. The more wrong answers the "learner" gives, the higher in voltage he must be shocked with. The control panel went from 15 volts to 450 volts. At 120 volts the "teacher" can tell that the learner is in pain and by 150 volts the "teacher" yells out, "get me out of here, I refuse to go on." At this point the psychologist who is in the same room as the "teacher" tell him/her to go on. Of course, nobody is really getting shocked. The "learner" is pretending to be in pain to see how far the subject will go. At 300 volts the "learner" is to yell, "I can't stand the pain anymore" and start yelling and screaming and pounding the wall. At 330 he is to be silent as though he died. Milgram wanted to see how many people would keep going all the way to the maximum voltage. The result showed that 60% of the subjects went all the way to the 450 voltage button even though they knew that the "learner" was in extreme pain and maybe even dying.