Electrical Shock Experiment Devon Landon, Aaron, Buchanan, Dylan Coveney, and Andres Pation

The purpose of the experiment was to see how much participants are willing to hurt an unknown individual just because an authority figure advises them to do so. The hypothesis of the experiment is that people will take it as far as the instructor tells them to go regardless of what is happening. The researchers were testing whether the participants were willing to do what they were told or whether they would decide for themselves what was too much. The experiment involved several volunteers (teachers) that asked the questions to students (paid actors) questions and if they answered the questions wrong the teachers would administer electrical shock therapy to teach the right answers. The teacher never saw the student and was put under the assumption that they were really shocking the students. In reality, the students were not really being shocked but were paid actors with a script.

It was thought that 1-3% of the subjects would not stop giving the shocks, they thought that you’d have to be pathological or a psychopath to do so. Turns out that 65% never stopped giving shock, none even stopped when the learner begged them to stop because of heart problems. Yes, it did come to a surprise to me that the volunteers wouldn’t stop when it was obviously creating a massive amount of pain to the students. This shows how in other situations how humans can do despicable things, such as Nazi Germany. People often wonder how the citizens of Germany at the time of the holocaust allowed the killing of 6 million people when in fact the people in the trail showed the same characteristics. They both showed that as long as they are supported by an authority figure people will do whatever they are persuaded to do. No, the experiment I think was very well put together and showed an excellent point of how human beings will go to great lengths in harming others just for the simple fact that they were doing what they were told to do, by an authoritative figure.