Welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff. When we enter a new relationship, whether it's a

dating relationship, a marriage, a friendship, or a new job.

One of the things we have to do is consider,

how is this relationship having an impact on me

positively or negatively,

particularly in regards to our happiness. We're here to explore how to be happy.

And this lesson, this podcast, is going to be about how others can greatly impact us in regards

to our level of happiness. As much as we may want to

influence them, they too can influence us in both positive and negative ways.

And in today's podcast I want to share a story, a very powerful story,

about a study that's been done all over the world to really show the influence

our power that other people have on us in our behavior.

There was a psychologist who worked at Yale named Stanley Milgram who wanted to see the influence

of authority on other people. So what he did, he had three people in this study. Two of them were part of the study and one was just a subject. The subject came in and the first pretend subject was a person in a lab coat, a white lab coat, and he or she told this

subject, like you and I, I want you to administer a shock every time the person behind this wall who you can hear but you can't see

is going to answer a question wrong. There were a bunch of questions and the rule was

that each time they answered a question wrong, they were administered a shock.

But the trick of this study was that the shock kept getting stronger and stronger.

And we actually reached the point where it actually would kill the person and they were told this and they understood that this was a consequence that they reached this level, you know, a very dangerous high level.

So the experimenters wanted to know, and again the person behind the wall wasn't really being

shocked, they were part of the experiment.

The only person who didn't know anything about the study was the person administering

...