Stanley Milgram's Controversial Study Of The Effects Of Obedience

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In 1963 Stanley Milgram conducted a controversial study of the effects of obedience. The focus of the experiment was on the apparent conflict between obedience to authority and an individual’s conscience. At the time, Milgram was concerned with investigating whether Germans were characteristically obedient to authority figures as this was a common explanation for the atrocities of the Nazis during the Second World War. The experiment was conducted in a manner that paired the participants. One would be the “teacher” and one the “learner”. However, the experiment was fixed. The subject of the study was always the “teacher” and the “learner” was a member of Milgram’s research team. The unsuspecting participant would witness electrodes attached