Milgram Obedience Experiment (1961)

Stanley Milgram's Obedience Experiment at Yale found that 65% of participants delivered what they believed were lethal electric shocks to a stranger under authority pressure, designed to explain ordinary Germans' roles in the Holocaust. The experiment inflicted extreme psychological distress—with participants showing visible seizures, sweating, and nervous laughter—without adequate debriefing, sparking ongoing debates about ethics versus scientific insight. Faster than the average replication's obedience rate of 45%, this original study's 65% figure was 20 percentage points higher, affecting over 700 volunteers in total and becoming a cornerstone of social psychology despite its ethical costs.