Stanley Milgram's "Behavioral Study of Obedience" was an extremely disturbing look at humanity. Originally an attempt to study the reasons why anybody would obey a leader such as Adolf Hitler, Milgram found some astounding discoveries about human nature. The study was conducted as such: there was three basic individuals involved; the subject, also known as the teacher, the learner , a confederate, and the scientist. The learner and the scientist were both members of Milgram's team. Milgram designed the experiment so that the subject would need to quiz the learner on word-pairings and for each successive incorrect answer given, the teacher would administer an electric shock ranging from 15 volts increasing with every wrong answer up to 450 volts. In order to appear as though the decision of who became the learner and who was the teacher, the scientist made both the confederate and the subject choose a slip of paper, however, both were marked as being the "Teacher" so that the subject was always the teacher. The teacher is introduced to the learner and then placed behind what appears to be an actual shock generator, which is nothing more than an elaborately constructed hoax, meant to do no harm to Milgram's confederate. Milgram's experiment was intended to discover just how far the teacher would continue in shocking the learner. In order to standardize the results, all of the answers that the learner gave and all of the experimenter's comments were scripted. Expert, as well as layman, opinions which Milgram took prior to the study estimated that most would stop shocking the learner soon after beginning, and an incredible few sadists would continue to the highest voltage level of 450 volts. What Milgram found alarmed him. Of the forty individuals who responded to the study, none stopped shocking the learner before a high-level 'intense shock,' and twenty-six continued to the end, past the label stating 'Danger: Severe Shock.'

We all want to think that Stanley Milgram happened to pick out certain sadistic individuals to study and that his experiment is not generalizable to all of society, but it is difficult to argue that. Milgram's subjects included a wide variation of ages, from 20 to 50 years old, and a wide range of economic levels, from unskilled workers to professionals. Milgram appears to have had a good cross section of society. So, despite how much we all wish that humans are innately good, it seems nearly anybody can easily be swayed by someone they perceive to be an authority figure, such as a rousing political figure or even a man posing as an experimenter in a laboratory coat. What a sad state of affairs when somebody would be so quick to murder another person merely because they are urged on to, without even being forced, by an authority figure.

We can easily find many real world applications of this study. The first, most obvious is evidenced by the holocaust. Many millions were murdered by Nazis after being directed by a single authority: Adolf Hitler. More current happenings are occurring in North Korea as we speak. According to the U. S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, a bi-partisan, not-for-profit human rights organization, "Satellite photography and testimony from escaped former prisoners reveal that North Korea has between 150,000 and 200,000 political prisoners working as slave laborers in prison colonies known as kwan-li-so." Organized a great while ago, the political prisoners are routinely tortured using severe punishments for what the government of North Korea believes to be harmful to itself. All of this condoned by a single authority figure, Kim Jong-il, the leader of the Democratic Republic of North Korea. Kim leads his country with an iron fist, forcing random people on the street into their goulags.

This study was ethical. Initially, the subjects were mislead into believing that the study was one of the effect of punishment on learning. Were Milgram to leave it as that, then it would be unethical, however, at the end of the experiment the subject was debriefed. Beyond that, the subject was allowed to quit whenever he desired to, with only minimal prods to continue coming from the experimenter.

This experiment is very important as it describes how easily people may be swayed into doing something which they would normally not do. There are no changes that I would make in how the experiment was administered. It definitely deserves inclusion in a reader of classic studies in the field of psychology because it is a unique study which would be hard to demonstrate otherwise.