Stanley Milgram conducted an obedience study in the early 1960s that became extremely well known. Milgram grew up in the Bronx and Queens, New York. He attended Harvard University under Gordon Allport and was a teaching assistant to Solomon Asch, who studied compliance. Milgram wrote his thesis on behavioral differences in different European countries to help reveal social pressure and conformity between different ethnic groups. During his studies, Asch moved to Princeton and later contacted Milgram about helping him edit a book on conformity that Asch was writing. Milgram accepted Asch's job offer. While working with Asch at Princeton, Milgram was offered an assistant professorship which he eventually accepted after turning down a job offer at Harvard (Blass, 2009). There were three main reasons why Milgram wanted to study obedience. First, he wanted to delve deeper into Asch conformity studies. Second, as the son of Jewish immigrants, Milgram wanted to use obedience research to help understand the Holocaust. His ultimate reason for studying obedience was that he wanted to pursue a career in social psychology (Blass, 2009). Milgram's study consisted of many experiments. The study for which he gained notoriety consisted of a participant paid by the community and an accomplice who was told that the study was focused on the effects of punishment on learning. The participant was the teacher and the confederate was the student. The participant was allowed to watch as the student was tied to a chair in another room. The electrodes were attached to the student's arm. The task of the participant/teacher was to administer a learning test in pairs to the student via an intercom. The student then indicated his or her response by pressing a button attached to the participant's side of the room. Participants were seated in front of a shock generator with 30 switches and were told to shock the student every time he gave an incorrect answer. The 30 switches in front of the shock generator varied from 15 to 450 volts in 15 volt increments. Participants were taught to start with the lowest switch and gradually increase the generator volts for each incorrect answer (Burger, 2009). In reality, the student never received any shock, although he gave many incorrect answers. This required the participant to administer increasingly stronger shocks. When the voltage reached 150, the students screamed and the participant could hear the screams through the wall.