The Milgram experiment is a test devised to see how far someone will go just because a man in a white coat/man in power says so. A group of people would be spli into two groups so that they would have to be against their friends. One person would then be put in a room and told that he would have to ask the other person a series of questions. If he got those questions wrong then they would have to press a button giving them an electric shot. Every time they had to shock them they also had to increase the voltage until eventually it would be so high that it would kill them. They were told that the reason they were doing this was because they were trying to prove that it got good results as a fast way of learning. The other person would then be taken to another room where they were told what the test was about and that he had to answer the questions wrong on purpose and then when they pressed the button to admit an electric shock they had to scream to make it realistic. They were not really tied to the machine.
From carrying out this experiment they found out that most people would kill their friends just because they were told to. To me this is an inspirational experiment. It gives us a better understanding of what people in power can get the average person to do. It also heightens our understanding of power itself and the way it controls us.
Power is an extraordinary thing. People with power have a lot more control over things than people without power but a person in power only has that power because of the network around them. For example, the man in the white coat only has the power to control the people participating in the experiment because of the frame in which he is working in. The working environment, the whole science body of work and the institutions in which they control and have created all work together in creating the power of the man in the white coat. People dont kill their friend because the man in the white coat said so they killed their friend because all scientists and science institutions told them to.
