Final answer:
The Milgram Experiment, which measured the willingness of participants to obey authority and potentially cause harm to others, was conducted by psychologist Stanley Milgram at Yale University in the early 1960s.
Step-by-step explanation:
Stanley Milgram's Obedience Experiments
The famous experiments on obedience at Yale University were conducted by psychologist Stanley Milgram in the early 1960s. Milgram's work was motivated by the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal, who used the defense that he was "just following orders" during the Holocaust. The Milgram Experiment aimed to measure how much pain an ordinary person would inflict on another simply because they were ordered to do so by an authority figure. During the experiment, each participant was told that they were the 'teacher' and was instructed to administer electric shocks to a 'learner' every time an incorrect answer was given to a series of questions. Despite the increasing severity of the shocks and the apparent distress of the learner, many participants continued to obey the authority figure's commands.
The key findings of Milgram's obedience study were that a significant majority of the participants were willing to obey authority to the extent that they would cause apparent harm to another person. These outcomes shed a disturbing light on the power of authority and its influence on obedience, raising profound ethical concerns about the experiment itself. Milgram's research demonstrated just how far people will go in obeying orders from an authority figure, challenging previous beliefs about moral and ethical behavior and the capacity of individuals to resist unjust authority.