Australian researchers are picking apart a famous study on people’s ability and willingness to be corrupted.

The Milgram Experiment on Obedience to Authority Figures was a series of psychological experiments that measured the readiness of participants to obey authority and perform acts against with their own personal conscience.

The most famous of these tests involved three individuals: the experimenter, the subject of the experiment (a volunteer), and an actor pretending to be a volunteer.

They took on three distinct roles: the Experimenter (an authoritative role), the Teacher (a role intended to obey the orders of the Experimenter), and the Learner (the recipient of

Prior to the ‘test’, the Teacher (the true subject of the experiment) was subjected to an electric shock from a small generator, so they could learn first-hand what it was like.

The Teacher was then instructed to deliver shocks to the Learner when they (purposely) wrongly recalled a list of word pairings.

The Teacher was told that the shocks would increase with each incorrect answer.

After several wrong answers and voltage-level increases, the Learner (an actor) would bang on the wall that separated them from the Teacher.

After a few times banging on the wall and complaining about a heart condition, all responses by the Learner would cease.

At this point, many Teachers would ask to stop the experiment and check on the Learner.

The shock generator had switches marked up to 450 volts, but luckily for the Learner they were not actually administered. Instead, a pre-recorded tape of corresponding reactions was played.

Some test subjects paused part-way through and began to question the purpose of the experiment.

However, most continued after being told they would not be held responsible.

The Experimenter was there to convince and push the Teacher to deliver ever-increasing shocks, using verbal prods when they questioned the experiment such as; “The experiment requires that you continue”, and “It is absolutely essential that you continue”.

“Whether the learner likes it or not, you must go on until he has learned all the word pairs correctly, so please go on.”

Milgram took surveys of students and psychiatrists before conducting the tests, to gauge their thoughts on what level of shocks would prompt the Teacher to demand the experiment stop.

The experts predicted that by the 300-volt shock, when the victim fell silent, only 3.73 percent of the subjects would still continue. The poll found a belief that “only a little over one-tenth of one percent of the subjects would administer the highest shock on the board”.

But the results were very different.

In Milgram's experiments, 65 per cent (26 of 40) of participants administered the massive 450-volt shock, though many were very uncomfortable doing so.

At some point, every participant paused and questioned the experiment; some even said they would refund the money they were paid for participating in the experiment.

The Teachers also displayed physical evidence of tension and stress, such as sweating, trembling, stuttering, biting their lips, groaning, digging their fingernails into their skin, and some were even having nervous laughing fits or seizures.

Milgram later said he had shown that; “Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process".

“Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”

The study is still discussed in university courses today, despite years of strong warnings about its ethical and ideological underpinnings.

Now, 50 years later, a University of Queensland study has replicated the infamous experiment, calling into question Milgrams conclusion about “the extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority”.

UQ psychologist Alexander Haslam looked through Milgram’s notes and found that many of his subjects felt gratified and even happy to have contributed to the gruesome experiment.

But, Haslam says, Milgram had effectively radicalised the students.

“Obedience is not an ineluctable proclivity, but a choice,” Haslam wrote in 2011.

“People do not deliver electric shocks because they are ignorant of the effects, but because they believe in the nobility of the scientific enterprise.”

Now he has had a chance to run the tests again.

Haslam avoided the ethical foibles of the original experiment by using ‘Immersive Digital Realism’, where trained actors immerse themselves deeply into character in a way that actually allows psychologists to draw conclusions as if they were the character they impersonated.

Under similar conditions to the original Milgram experiment, Haslam again found that the majority of his new actor-subjects were willing to administer high voltage shocks.

But there was more detail. He found that Teachers who identified more strongly with the Experimenter would deliver the most punishing voltages.

Still in at least one case, when the Teacher was told “I’m sorry, Lana, you don’t have a choice”, she steadfastly refused to continue.

Haslam says his results suggest that perpetrators of great evil, from Nazis to modern terrorists, are not simple drones mindlessly following orders, but are participants in a cause they genuinely belive is just.

Haslem concludes: “We should be wary not of zombies, but of zealous followers of an ignoble cause.”

The full research report has been published in PLOS One.