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What were volunteers told the Milgram experiment was designed to study?

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Stanley Milgram American social psychologist Stanley Milgram with the “shock generator” used in his famous experiment at Yale University in the 1960s.

When volunteers were recruited for the Milgram experiment, they were told that the study was designed to investigate the effects of punishment on memory and learning ability.12

Participants were led to believe they were randomly assigned the role of a "teacher" who would administer electric shocks to a "learner" whenever the latter provided an incorrect answer to a series of questions. In reality, the study was a deception designed by Stanley Milgram to examine obedience to authority, with the "learner" being an actor and the shocks being simulated.12