Obedience to Authority | Stanley Milgram

Half a century ago, social scientist Stanley Milgram carried out a series of experiments. The "teacher" is told to administer electroshocks in progressively more painful degrees to the "learner." The teacher--unaware that the learner is an actor receiving no shocks at all--is the real focus of the study. These controversial and criticized experiments illustrate how people will obey authority regardless of consequences.

“[Milgram's] investigations accomplish what we should expect of responsible social science: to inform the intellect without trivializing the phenomenon.”—Science 
    

About the Author

Stanley Milgram taught social psychology at Yale University and Harvard University before becoming a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His honors and awards include a Ford Foundation fellowship, an -American Association for the Advancement of Science sociopsychological prize, and a Guggenheim fellowship. He died in 1984 at the age of fifty-one.