In Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiment, what authority figure instructed participants to continue the procedure?

In Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiment, an experimenter in a lab coat instructed participants to continue the procedure.

Beginning in 1961 at Yale University, Milgram studied how far ordinary adults would follow orders from an authority figure. Participants believed they were administering increasingly strong electric shocks to another person whenever that person answered a word-pair test incorrectly. The shocks were not real, and the apparent victim was an actor.

When participants hesitated, the experimenter used standardized prompts such as “Please continue” and “The experiment requires that you continue.” In the original condition, 26 of 40 participants continued to the highest labeled level of 450 volts, despite hearing the learner’s apparent protests.

The study became influential and controversial because of the distress it caused and its implications for obedience. The experimenter was not a police officer or military commander; the laboratory setting and scientific authority were central parts of the situation. Later replications and variations found that obedience changed when the authority figure or experimental setting changed.