Milgram experiment

The Milgram experiment was a famous scientific experiment of social psychology. The experiment was first described by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University in an article titled Behavioral Study of Obedience published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology in 1963, and later summarized in his 1974 book Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. It was intended to measure the willingness of a participant to obey an authority who instructs the participant to do something that may conflict with the participant's personal conscience.

Related Topics:
Famous scientific experiment - Social psychology - Experiment - Stanley Milgram - Psychologist - Yale University - Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology - 1963 - 1974 - Obey - Authority - Conscience

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The experiments began in July 1961, a year after the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiment to answer the question "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?" (Milgram, 1974)

Related Topics:
1961 - Adolf Eichmann - Jerusalem - The Holocaust

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Milgram summed up in the article "The Perils of Obedience" (Milgram 1974), writing:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:"The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~