Page 60 - The Social Animal

42 The Social Animal

the cover story; actually, it is a study of the extent to which people
will obey authority. When the volunteer appears at the lab for his ap-
pointment, he is paired with another man, and a somewhat stern ex-
perimenter in a technician’s coat explains that they will be testing the
effects of punishment on learning. The exercise requires one person,
the learner, to memorize a list of word pairs on which the other per-
son, the teacher, will test him. The two men draw slips to determine
their roles; the actual participant draws the role of teacher. He is led
to a “Shock Generator,” which has an instrument panel with a row
of 30 toggle switches, calibrated from a low point of 15 volts (labeled
“Slight Shock”) and extending through levels of moderate and severe
shocks to a high of 450 volts (labeled “XXX”). By throwing the suc-
cessive switches, the teacher will deliver an increasingly intense shock
each time the learner fails to answer correctly. Then the teacher fol-
lows the experimenter and the other man (the learner) into the next
room, where the learner is strapped into an electric chair apparatus
and is attached by electrodes to the Shock Generator. In response to
the learner’s inquiry about his mild heart condition, the experimenter
reassures him, “Although the shocks can be extremely painful, they
cause no permanent tissue damage.”
In actuality, the learner knows that he needn’t worry. He is not a
real participant but is an accomplice of the experimenter, and the
drawing to assign roles has been rigged so that he will play the role
of the learner and the real participant will be the teacher.The learner
is not really wired to the electricity. But the teacher firmly believes
that the victim in the next room is wired to the Shock Generator that
he operates. He has even experienced a sample shock (from a 45-volt
battery inside the machine), he hears the learner react as if he is re-
ally being hurt, and he is convinced that the shocks are extremely
painful.
As the exercise begins, the learner responds correctly several
times but makes mistakes on a few trials. With each error, the teacher
throws the next switch, supposedly administering a shock of increas-
ing intensity. With the fifth shock, at 75 volts, the victim begins to
grunt and moan. At 150 volts, he asks to be let out of the experiment.
At 180 volts, he cries out that he can’t stand the pain. As the shock
levels approach the point labeled “Danger: Extreme Shock,” the
teacher hears the victim pound the wall and beg to be let out of the
room. But this, of course, does not constitute a correct response, so