The shocking truth about power and dressing in uniforms

Stanley Milgram started it. In the 1960s he stuck an ad in the paper offering four dollars to anyone willing to take part in an experiment. You probably know the rest. Volunteers were asked to administer an electric shock each time a ‘learner’ answered a question incorrectly. With a bloke in a white coat calmly urging them on, they upped the size of the shock. By the end of the experiment, 65 per cent had given a learner a potentially lethal dose of sparks. Of course, it was all pretend (phew) and designed to prove that it was not only Nazis who ‘just followed orders’.