[the phantom]

The experiment you are referring to wasn't exactly like that.

First, you had the professor doing the experiment. Then you had person A hooked up to the voltage (the guy who has to answer the questions), but he is also in on the experiment and, in fact, is not really being shocked- he's just pretending he's getting shocked.

The experiment was focused on person B, a student who had volunteered to take part in an experiment who was asked to run the shock machine (which actually didn't work).

The professor would ask person A questions and if he got one wrong he would tell person B to press the button to shock person A. Person A would pretend to be shocked. Each time he missed a question the professor would tell person B to increase the voltage and shock person A.

Person A would pretend that the shocks were getting more severe and eventually would ask the professor not to increase them any more, but he would ignore the request and order person B to continue increasing the voltage. Then person A would complain of a heart condition or something like that and ask to be let go but the professor would refuse and continue asking person B to increase the voltage.

Eventually person A would be screaming and writhing around (all an act, of course) but the professor would continue asking person B to up the voltage. The experiment was testing how long person B would follow orders before refusing.

The experiment found that a lot of people (I think it was most of them, actually) stayed with the experiment until the voltage was maxed. Several of them protested but did it anyway and all of them looked very troubled and concerned about person A, but kept working the shocker and following orders.