INTRODUCTORY DESCRIPTION OF THE EXPERIMENT Milgrams 1961 Obedience to Authority experiment begun with an advert placed in a local paper asking for volunteers to participate in a learning experiment at nearby Yale University. This was also backed up by a direct mail campaign. Once subjects had been selected for the experiment they were asked to come to Yale to part in the experiment which would last no more than an hour. In the Laboratory they met - so they believed - another participant like themselves and an experimenter or scientist. The scientist explained that the experiment was test to the effect of punishment on learning, in essence a memory test which involved memorising and repeating sequences of word pairs. Both participants were asked to take roles: The Teacher, who would adminster the punishment in response to right or wrong answers. The Learner, who would try to learn the word pairs read out by the Teacher - and would receive a punishment for every incorrect answer. The punishment was an electroshock, generated by an impressive generator with rows of switches and dials. The Teacher was instructed by the experimenter to give the Learner increasingly severe shocks every time he made a mistake. The shocks started at 15 volts and increased by 15 volts in thirty levels to 450 volts. The learner was taken to an adjoining room, strapped to a chair with an electrode attached on his forearm. As the experiment begins the Learner initially, for the first few word pairs, does well. Then he increasingly and consistently makes mistakes - and receives a shock for each mistake. The shocks are adminstered by the Teacher who is told by the experimenter to depress the appropriate switch on the shock machine. At Level Ten - 150 volts the Learner demands to be let out of the room and that the experiment stop. As the voltage increases so do the Learners cries (which soon turn to agonised screams) and demands that the experiment cease. By Level Twenty - 300 volts the Learner is refusing to answer anymore questions and screaming in pain. From Level 23 - 345 volts nothing more is heard of him. Is he alive? Has he had a heart attack? The Learner was very much alive and an actor. The shocks were not real and the Learner's screams were prerecorded, and broadcast back into the laboratory. The experimenter was also an actor and the selection - where the Learner apparently randomnly selected his role was fixed. Down to the last detail Milgram's experiment was an extraordinary illusion entirely designed to put the real volunteer - the Teacher, in a position where he or she had to decide whether to obey the experimenter carrying on with experiment shocking the Learner. Or refuse to continue with the experimenters instructions, persuaded by the agonised screams of the Learner. Over a period of three years Milgram performed many extraordinary variants of this experiment. This variant called Condition 02, voice feedback, will be the template upon which the Reenactment is based. For Results of the experiment....  Obedience Results  condition 02. Description of other variants of the experiment...  Obedience Variants