The Most Disturbing Human Experiments in History

Milgram Experiment

The Milgram Experiment is one of the most famous social experiments of all time. It involved three very basic elements: a man in a lab coat, a man sat at a device that could deliver electric charges, and a man in another room who could be heard screaming when said electric charges were delivered.The goal of the experiment was to study the conflict between obedience (to authority) and personal conscience to try and get a better understanding of how acts of genocide can occur.The experiment came just after the trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann. Milgram posed one simple question, “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?"Two test subjects were asked to draw lots to determine which of them would be the “teacher” and which would be the “learner”. The draw was fixed so the participant was always the teacher.