The “Electric Chair” With the help of the real subject, who had been assigned to the role of “teacher,” the experimenter straps the “learner” into the electric chair. Unbeknownst to the real subject, the learner was actually a 47-year-old accountant who had been carefully rehearsed for his part in the experimental deception. The experimenter told both subjects, “Although the shocks can be extremely painful, they cause no permanent tissue damage.”
From the film Obedience © 1968 by Stanley Milgram, ©renewed 1993 by Alexandra Milgram; and distributed by Alexander Street Press.