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Who participated in Stanley Milgram’s first obedience experiments?
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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.
In 1961, Stanley Milgram began recruiting participants for his obedience studies from New Haven, Connecticut. The volunteers were men between the ages of 20 and 50 who came from a variety of employment backgrounds.1
While approximately 780 people participated in the various iterations of the Milgram experiment over time—including about 40 women—the first official study consisted of 40 male participants. These individuals were recruited under the pretense that they were taking part in a study focused on memory and learning, and they were each paid $4.50 for their participation.12