Obedience to Authority

Author: Stanley Milgram
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062803409
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Book Description
A special edition reissue of the landmark study of humanity’s susceptibility to authoritarianism. 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 . . . A part of Harper Perennial’s special “Resistance Library” highlighting classic works that illuminate our times The inspiration for the major motion picture Experimenter

Obedience to Authority

Author: Thomas Blass
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1135683085
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Book Description
This edited volume demonstrates the vibrancy of the obedience paradigm by presenting 1990s' applications of the findings of Stanley Milgram's earlier research programme on obedience to authority.

The Social Psychology of Obedience Towards Authority

Author: Dariusz Dolinski
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781003049470
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 158

Book Description
"This rich volume explores the complex problem of obedience and conformity, re-examining Stanley Milgram's famous electric shock study, and presenting the findings of the most extensive empirical study on obedience toward authority since Milgram's era. Dolinski and Grzyb refer to their own series of studies testing various hypotheses from Milgram's and others' research, examining underlying obedience mechanisms as well as factors modifying the degree of obedience displayed by individuals in different situations. They offer their theoretical model explaining subjects' obedience in Milgram's paradigm and describe numerous examples of the destructive effect of thoughtless obedience both in our daily lives as well as in crucial historical events, stressing the need for critical thinking when issued with a command. Concluding with reflections on how to prevent the danger of destructive obedience to authority, this insightful volume will be fascinating reading for students and academics in social psychology, as well as those in fields concerned with complex social problems"--

Crimes of Obedience

Author: Herbert C. Kelman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300048131
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Book Description
Sergeant William Calley's defense of his behavior in the My Lai massacre and the widespread public support for his argument that he was merely obeying orders from a superior and was not personally culpable led Herbert C. Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton to investigate the attitudes toward responsibility and authority that underlie "crimes of obedience"--not only in military circumstances like My Lai but as manifested in Watergate, the Iran-Contra scandal, and the Kurt Waldheim affair. Their book is an ardent plea for the right and obligation of citizens to resist illegal and immoral orders from above.

Behind the Shock Machine

Author: Gina Perry
Publisher: New Press, The
ISBN: 1595589252
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
When social psychologist Stanley Milgram invited volunteers to take part in an experiment at Yale in the summer of 1961, none of the participants could have foreseen the worldwide sensation that the published results would cause. Milgram reported that fully 65 percent of the volunteers had repeatedly administered electric shocks of increasing strength to a man they believed to be in severe pain, even suffering a life-threatening heart condition, simply because an authority figure had told them to do so. Such behavior was linked to atrocities committed by ordinary people under the Nazi regime and immediately gripped the public imagination. The experiments remain a source of controversy and fascination more than fifty years later. In Behind the Shock Machine, psychologist and author Gina Perry unearths for the first time the full story of this controversial experiment and its startling repercussions. Interviewing the original participants—many of whom remain haunted to this day about what they did—and delving deep into Milgram's personal archive, she pieces together a more complex picture and much more troubling picture of these experiments than was originally presented by Milgram. Uncovering the details of the experiments leads her to question the validity of that 65 percent statistic and the claims that it revealed something essential about human nature. Fleshed out with dramatic transcripts of the tests themselves, the book puts a human face on the unwitting people who faced the moral test of the shock machine and offers a gripping, unforgettable tale of one man's ambition and an experiment that defined a generation.

The Call of Character

Author: Mari Ruti
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231164084
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Book Description
Should we feel inadequate for failing to be healthy, balanced, and well-adjusted? Is such an existential equilibrium realistic or even desirable? Condemning our cultural obsession with cheerfulness and “positive thinking,” Mari Ruti calls for a resurrection of character that honors our more eccentric frequencies, arguing that sometimes the most tormented and anxiety-ridden life can also be the most rewarding. Ruti critiques our current search for personal meaning and the pragmatic attempt to normalize human beings’ unruly and idiosyncratic natures. Exposing the tragic banality of a happy life commonly lived, she instead emphasizes the advantages of a lopsided life rich in passion and fortitude. Ruti shows what counts is not our ability to evade existential uncertainty but to meet adversity in such a way that we do not become irrevocably broken. We are in danger of losing the capacity to cope with complexity, ambiguity, melancholia, disorientation, and disappointment, leaving us feeling less “real,” less connected, and unable to metabolize a full range of emotions. Heeding the call of our character may mean acknowledging the marginalized, chaotic aspects of our being, for they carry a great deal of creative energy. Ruti shows it is precisely this energy that makes us inimitable and irreplaceable.

The Man Who Shocked The World

Author: Thomas Blass
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0786725079
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 402

Book Description
The creator of the famous "Obedience Experiments," carried out at Yale in the 1960s, and originator of the "six degrees of separation" concept, Stanley Milgram was one of the most innovative scientists of our time. In this sparkling biography-the first in-depth portrait of Milgram-Thomas Blass captures the colorful personality and pioneering work of a social psychologist who profoundly altered the way we think about human nature. Born in the Bronx in 1933, Stanley Milgram was the son of Eastern European Jews, and his powerful Obedience Experiments had obvious intellectual roots in the Holocaust. The experiments, which confirmed that "normal" people would readily inflict pain on innocent victims at the behest of an authority figure, generated a firestorm of public interest and outrage-proving, as they did, that moral beliefs were far more malleable than previously thought. But Milgram also explored other aspects of social psychology, from information overload to television violence to the notion that we live in a small world. Although he died suddenly at the height of his career, his work continues to shape the way we live and think today. Blass offers a brilliant portrait of an eccentric visionary scientist who revealed the hidden workings of our very social world.

Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram (Summary)

Author: QuickRead
Publisher: QuickRead.com
ISBN:
Category : Study Aids
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
Do you want more free book summaries like this? Download our app for free at https://www.QuickRead.com/App and get access to hundreds of free book and audiobook summaries. Learn about the controversial Milgram Experiment. Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist whose experiments on human subjects interrogated our understanding of human nature. His seminal text Obedience to Authority (1974) explores and analyzes his experiments along with his findings. The infamous Milgram Experiment examines the fundamental constructs of human nature, such as the motivations that drive us, our relationship with conscience, loyalty, and pain, and our willingness to inflict torture on others.

Summary of Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority

Author: Everest Media,
Publisher: Everest Media LLC
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 39

Book Description
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The experiment was to see how far a person would go in a concrete and measurable situation in which he was ordered to inflict increasing pain on a protesting victim. At what point would the subject refuse to obey the experimenter. #2 The Milgram experiment was designed to see how people would respond to a clear moral imperative. It found that a substantial proportion of subjects would continue to the last shock on the generator even when the person they were shocking begged them not to. #3 The most fundamental lesson of the experiment is that ordinary people, who are simply doing their jobs, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Many people were unable to realize their values in action, and continued participating in the experiment even though they disagreed with what they were doing. #4 The most common adjustment of thought in the obedient subject is to see himself as not responsible for his actions. He divests himself of responsibility by attributing all initiative to the experimenter, a legitimate authority.

An Analysis of Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority

Author: Mark Gridley
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1351352571
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 120

Book Description
Stanley Milgram is one of the most influential and widely-cited social psychologists of the twentieth century. Recognized as perhaps the most creative figure in his field, he is famous for crafting social-psychological experiments with an almost artistic sense of creative imagination – casting new light on social phenomena in the process. His 1974 study Obedience to Authority exemplifies creative thinking at its most potent, and controversial. Interested in the degree to which an “authority figure” could encourage people to commit acts against their sense of right and wrong, Milgram tricked volunteers for a “learning experiment” into believing that they were inflicting painful electric shocks on a person in another room. Able to hear convincing sounds of pain and pleas to stop, the volunteers were told by an authority figure – the “scientist” – that they should continue regardless. Contrary to his own predictions, Milgram discovered that, depending on the exact set up, as many as 65% of people would continue right up to the point of “killing” the victim. The experiment showed, he believed, that ordinary people can, and will, do terrible things under the right circumstances, simply through obedience. As infamous and controversial as it was creatively inspired, the “Milgram experiment” shows just how radically creative thinking can shake our most fundamental assumptions.