Milgram Obedience Experiment (1961)

Stanley Milgram's experiment at Yale showed that 65% of participants would administer what they believed were lethal electric shocks to a stranger simply because an authority figure told them to. Designed to understand how ordinary Germans participated in the Holocaust, the results were deeply disturbing — but so was the experiment itself, which subjected participants to extreme psychological distress without adequate debriefing. It remains central to debates about obedience and ethical research.