. An advertisement was put in the local newspaper, asking for male participants of all occupations to take part in a study of memory and learning, for a $4 incentive.
. In the original experiment, 10 male participants took part majority being at Yale University.
. There were 2 confederates in the study - 'experimenter' and 'learner'
. Individual PPS were told they and another man (learner) would take part to study the effects of punishment on memory.
. The experimenter stated the fairest way of allocating roles was to draw lots but it was RIGGED, meaning that the genuine ppt was the teacher and the confederate was the learner.
. The teacher and learner were then taken into a room, where the learner was then seated in an electric shock apparatus and arms strapped down.
. An electrode to administer an electric shock from the shock generator was strapped to the learner's wrist, the teacher was told the shocks would be painful but not dangerous. However, the learner experienced no shocks at all.
. In another room, they were shown the equipment - a shock generator with switches and lights going from 15v to 450v with descriptions about the shock levels.
. The teacher and learner were separated, and the experiment began. A list of word pairs is read by the teacher, which tests the learner. teacher gives a shock with it increasing every time the answer is wrong.