Back in 1961, a Yale University psychologist named Stanley Milgram placed an ad in the local paper,

offering $4 to individuals willing to take part in an hour-long experiment.

Over the next two years, hundreds of people take part in an hour-long experiment.

Over the next two years, hundreds of people took part in the test,

which would turn out to be one of the most famous

and controversial psychological experiments in history. Milgram was trying to get to the bottom of what could motivate him. and and to perform acts on other people so abhorrent that political theorist Hannah Arrant once described

them as the banality of evil.

Milgram's experiment went like this.

A pair of volunteers were introduced to one another where they drew straws to see who would be the tester and who would be the test subject.

While in the same room would be a rather official looking fellow in a lab coat to monitor their experiment.

But the person who got to be the tester didn't know was this was all theater, and in fact

it was really he who was being tested.

The tester and phony test subject were separated into two rooms where they couldn't see one another.

The doctor in the lab coat would ask the phony test subject a series of questions, while the tester was made to sit at a desk in front of a control board,

with instructions to administer a series of ever increasing electrical shocks to the person in the other room if they answered incorrectly.

In every test session, the phony subject would begin answering questions wrong

and pretend to be an increasing pain every time the person flipped the switch.

If the person in control objected or tried to quit, the man

in the lab coat would calmly order them to keep going. In many cases, the person in control

will get all the way to the top level of 450 volts and in those

instances the person in the other room would begin complaining about his heart

condition and soon fall eerily silent.

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