It's a social psychology experiment. There was an experimenter who was in charge of the session, a "teacher" who volunteered for the session, and the "learner." The rub was that the lots were rigged, and the "teacher" was actually the subject of the experiment, and the learner was an actor pretending to be a volunteer--and the "teacher" was the only one who didn't know it.
Anyway--the teacher and the learner were divided into separate rooms. The learner would then be asked to answer a series of questions, and the teacher was supposed to administer a shock to the learner every time a question was answered incorrectly by pushing a button. And every time, the voltage would increase by 15-volts. By the tenth the victim would demand to be freed and by the three hundred volt shock, they'd stop answering.
Now, again: the whole thing was fake, the actor was never electrocuted. There were these pre-recorded sounds that would play every time a "shock" was delivered, included banging and if the "teacher" protested then the experimenter was to prod them to continue--tell 'em they're not allowed to stop.
Before I tell you the results--what do you think would happen if this experiment were conducted a hundred times with a hundred different hypothetical teachers?
no subject
Anyway--the teacher and the learner were divided into separate rooms. The learner would then be asked to answer a series of questions, and the teacher was supposed to administer a shock to the learner every time a question was answered incorrectly by pushing a button. And every time, the voltage would increase by 15-volts. By the tenth the victim would demand to be freed and by the three hundred volt shock, they'd stop answering.
Now, again: the whole thing was fake, the actor was never electrocuted. There were these pre-recorded sounds that would play every time a "shock" was delivered, included banging and if the "teacher" protested then the experimenter was to prod them to continue--tell 'em they're not allowed to stop.
Before I tell you the results--what do you think would happen if this experiment were conducted a hundred times with a hundred different hypothetical teachers?