Background and methodology

To understand how Nazi Germany’s citizens carried out the Holocaust, Milgram designed experiments testing obedience to authority. Participants, acting as “teachers” in a supposed learning study at Yale University, were instructed by a lab-coated scientist to administer electric shocks to a “learner” for incorrect answers, with voltages escalating from 15 to 450 volts. The learner was an actor feigning distress, and no shocks were delivered. The experiment tested how far participants would go to obey immoral commands from a perceived legitimate authority (Milgram, 1963).