Whether one should obey orders when they come in conflict with what is morally correct is a question old almost as the civilization itself. This concept was discussed by philosophers, written about by writers, studied by psychologists, and it was a topic of the most important series of experiments in history of social psychology. The experiments were conducted by Stanley Milgram between 1964 and 1975. The purpose of Milgrams experiment was to determine to what extent would subjects referred to as teachers be willing to comply with orders of authority, even if it meant imposing harsh bodily harm on subjects referred to as learners. The experiment was conducted at Yale University and it involved two sets of subjects, teachers and learners. The learners were in fact the confederates where as the teachers, who were the focus of the experiment, were just ordinary people who decided to participate. When taken into the room subjects are explained that they are participating in an experiment on effects of punishment on learning. Subject are then explained that teacher is to read a list of things to learner and then to ask him questions about the list. If the learner answers correctly teacher is to move on, where as if the answer is wrong teacher is to shock learner using the electric shock generator. After both parties agreed the learner is strapped into a chair and the teacher is led to a room where he is seated in front of a large shock generator. First thing the teacher notices is a large horizontal line of switches ranging from 15 volts all the way up to 450 volts, and so there would be no confusion they are also labeled as slight shock, severe shock and so on to DANGER-SEVERE SHOCK. Teacher is explained that for every wrong answer he is to move up in increments of 15 volts. And the experiment begins. At 75 volts learner grunts and at 150 volts he demands to be released from experiment. Experimenter on the other hand is urgi...
