THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE THE EXPERIMENTER
“The classic account of the human tendency to follow orders, no matter who they hurt or what their consequences.” — Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World
In the 1960s Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram famously carried out a series of experiments that forever changed our perceptions of morality and free will. The subjects—or “teachers”—were instructed to administer electroshocks to a human “learner,” with the shocks becoming progressively more powerful and painful. Controversial but now strongly vindicated by the scientific community, these experiments attempted to determine to what extent people will obey orders from authority figures regardless of consequences. “Milgram’s experiments on obedience have made us more aware of the dangers of uncritically accepting authority,” wrote Peter Singer in the New York Times Book Review. Featuring a new introduction from Dr. Philip Zimbardo, who conducted the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, Obedience to Authority is Milgram’s fascinating and troubling chronicle of his classic study and a vivid and persuasive explanation of his conclusions.
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- Harper Perennial
dig into this full explanation of Milgram’s greatest study and warning in one For anyone who will issue or carry out orders in a military chain of command, dig into this full explanation of Milgram’s greatest study and warning in one. The two minute film clips that we have all seen of a handful of the subjects generously handing over near-lethal levels of electric shocks (not really – but yet, really in their minds) to their fellow study volunteers (not volunteers as we know they are study confederates) are just glimpses, brief and vivid of the depth of stunning…
extraordinary book This is an extraordinary book, not only by its content but also by its writing style – terse, precise and with much wry humor. Stanley Milgram was thorough and imaginative in his experiments. While many have heard of his experiments testing the willingness of ordinary people to hurt others, the description of what he did is in fact quite stunning. While I am a research scientist used to read very critically, I am impressed by how many possibilities and possible causes Milgram tried, and by his…