9 Most Shocking Experiments In Human History
1. Milgram Experiment
The Milgram Experiment is one of the most famous social experiments of all time. It involved three very basic elements: a man in a lab coat, a man sat at a device that could deliver electric charges, and a man in another room who could be heard screaming when said electric charges were delivered.
The goal of the experiment was to study the conflict between obedience (to authority) and personal conscience to try and get a better understanding of how acts of genocide can occur.
The experiment came just after the trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann. Milgram posed one simple question, “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?"
Two test subjects were asked to draw lots to determine which of them would be the “teacher” and which would be the “learner”. The draw was fixed so the participant was always the teacher. The other subject was one of Milgram’s colleagues, Mr. Wallace.
The learner (Wallace) was taken into a room and had electrodes attached to him. Then the researcher and the teacher went into another room that contained an electric shock generator.
The learner was given a list of word pairs to remember. The teacher would name a word and the learner had to recall its pair from a list of four possible choices. Every time he made a mistake the teacher had to administer a shock.
There were 30 switches on the generator that went from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 volts (danger – severe shock). The learner would keep giving wrong answers and the teacher would have to keep administering higher volts of electricity. Each time the screams from the other room would become more and more anguished.
If the teacher refused to continue the experimenter had four phases he could use to convince him to carry on. 1: Please continue. 2: The experiment requires you to continue. 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue. 4: You have no other choice but to continue.
All of the participants continued to 300 volts before refusing and 65% carried on all the way to the lethal 450 volts.
Milgram concluded that, “Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being.”