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The aim of Milgram’s 1963 study was to see how far an ordinary person would go when asked to follow orders from an authority figure, even if it meant breaking their ethical code and harming another person. There were number of aspects of Milgram’s procedure. Firstly 40 male participants aged 20-50 were chosen by a volunteer sample as they replied to a local newspaper advert which was asking for people to take part in a study at Yale. The participants were paid $4.50 an hour and were told it was a study to find out how punishment affects the memory; the study was actually about willingness to obey an authority figure. There were two actors (confederates) one experimenter and one learner (Mr Wallace). The draw was always fixed and the participant always ended up as the teacher. The learner (Mr Wallace) was then strapped into a shock generator and the experimenter and the teacher were placed in the room next to the learner, they couldn’t see the learner but they could hear him. The teacher had to give an electric shock which went up to 450v each time the learner got the answer wrong, the participants thought that the shocks were real but they were fake. The learner gave out mainly the wrong answers and their script was scripted , at 300v he pounded loudly on the wall and at 315v he stopped pounding and remained silent.
The results of Milgram’s original study showed that every participant (100%) went to at least 300v, 65% of the participants went up to 450v.Many participants showed signs of distress such as some participants had nervous laughter, wept and begged to stop believing they had killed the learner. Most of the participants thought that the experiment was real.
Milgram came to the conclusion that people obey authority because of the situation they are in and not because they are evil. The study showed the power of authority over our behaviour. High levels of obedience were observed for various reasons such as the experiment was held at Yale university which is prestigious.

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