It has now been almost 50 years since Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram gathered a small group of New Haven, Connecticut, residents in the basement of Yale University’s Linsly-Chittenden Hall.

Milgram, a specialist on obedience, designed his experiment against the backdrop of the Adolf Eichmann trial. In the experiment, Milgram tricked volunteer “teachers” into administering what they believed to be increasingly severe electric shocks to actors whom they thought to be ordinary volunteers when they answered questions wrong. The teachers could hear but not see the recipients of their shocks.