Stanley Milgram
Stanley Milgram
Stanley Milgramwas an American social psychologist, best known for his controversial experiment on obedience conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale. Milgram was influenced by the events of the Holocaust, especially the trial of Adolf Eichmann, in developing the experiment...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPsychologist
Date of Birth15 August 1933
CountryUnited States of America
men degrees individual-morality
Each individual possesses a conscience which to a greater or lesser degree serves to restrain the unimpeded flow of impulses destructive to others. But when he merges his person into an organizational structure, a new creature replaces autonomous man, unhindered by the limitations of individual morality, freed of humane inhibition, mindful only of the sanctions of authority.
jobs people agents
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process.
long people authority
A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act, and without pangs of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority.
perception puppets may
It may be that we are puppets-puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation. (1974)
men kind situation
It is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.
leadership responsibility psychology
The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.
men mutual-support wish
When an individual wishes to stand in opposition to authority, he does best to find support for his position from others in his group. The mutual support provided by men for each other is the strongest bulwark we have against the excesses of authority.
men dwelling isolation
Some system of authority is a requirement of all communal living, and it is only the man dwelling in isolation who is not forced to respond, through defiance or submission, to the commands of others.
men political purpose
Obedience is the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose. It is the dispositional cement that binds men to systems of authority.
giving political challenges
Perhaps the challenge is to invent the political structure that will give conscience a better chance against authority.
self action behavior
For a person to feel responsible for his actions, he must sense that the behavior has flowed from the self.