info missing that makes me not able to appreciate this "experiement"

1. Not 100% but quite sure they are allowed to stop, the experiment is if they will do so breaking towards normal convention against authority/contract etc.

2. No, not as far as the movie shows (they mention that the money is the subjects and they get to keep it no matter what - in the movie). Though as it is a test the sbjects might be unsure what they are obligated to do or not.

3. Because just as the test was just about a little payment (small risk of value), the risks in denying a chain of command (powerstructure) of war is alot higher risk. The point being they correlate in risk versus reward.

Ignorance is only a bliss if you haven't reached awareness.
My imdb posts are getting altered.

It was made perfectly clear that the participants could walk out the door right from the beginning and still keep their money. But I'd argue that in the 60s people didn't want to "take money for nothing." They probably felt an obligation to comply because they got paid even though it wasn't presented that way. Very interesting that this study has been repeated in more recent times with similar results.

[deleted]

1) the participants were not contractually obligated to continue. It would actually defeat the object of the experiment if they were. The point of the experiment was to show that people did things they weren't comfortable doing just because an authority figure told them to, not because they had to.

2) No there weren't financial consequences for stopping. When the subjects were given their cheque, they were told they could keep it regardless of what happened in the experiment.

3)[quote]in what context does the experimenter scientist represent an "authority"[quote]
The tester represents an authority figure in the sense that he's telling the subject what to do, just as a cop, a soldier or a politician might do in real life.

[quote]how does this experiment illustrate that when every teacher was reluctant to move forward but only did so when reassured that the subject was not being harmed.[quote]

The subjects were not reassured that the man in the other room was not being harmed. When the subjects voiced concerns, the scientist just told them to get on with the test and that he accepted responsibility. He didn't state that the subject was not being harmed and he refused to go into the other room to check. The only reason the subjects had for continuing giving "shocks" was because this authority figure was telling them to.