03/12/2013

For its 25th anniversary All in the Mind launches 3 new awards to recognise outstanding help, support or advice in the field of mental health. Claudia Hammond explains the categories and how to nominate. Also in the programme, a new look at one of the most famous and controversial psychology experiments ever. In 1961 Stanley Milgram ran a series of experiments where unwitting volunteers were ordered to give increasing electric shocks to a man they'd never met under the guise of research into memory. Many gave a series of increasing shocks up to 450 Volts despite hearing screams and calls for help from the unseen 'victim'. But it was a set up. The shocks were fake and the victim was an actor. The results of Milgram's obedience research caused a worldwide sensation. Milgram reported that people had repeatedly shocked a man they believed to be in pain or even dying and he linked his findings to Nazi behaviour. But was his version of the results really what happened? Claudia Hammond talks to Gina Perry who has researched Milgram's unpublished papers and spoken to those who took part in the experiment. Her findings reveal a story far from Milgram's own version of his obedience research.