... of social influence. The essay begins by outlining Milgram's basic procedure. It then discusses the extent to which Milgram's findings can be explained in terms of the power of the situation. Finally, it evaluates the role of personality traits in the behaviour of Milgram's subjects. Milgram's experiments were arranged such that two subjects arrived at Yale University at around the same time and were greeted by the experimenter, who explained that the purpose of the study is to examine the effects of punishment on learning. The two subjects then drew slips of paper to determine who would become the 'teacher' and who would become the 'learner'. In fact, one subject was a confederate of the experimenter, and the draw was rigged such that the naive subject always became the teacher and the confederate became the learner. In Milgram's (1963) baseline condition the teacher was required to test the learner's ability ...

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