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
authority compared induced laboratory light national produced profound slumber state system
The state produced in the laboratory may be likened to a light doze, compared to the profound slumber induced by the preponent authority system of a national government.
actions authority callous demands good knuckle numbing people perform seen
With numbing regularity, good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe,
aggression anger behavior break execution given key lies nature relationship subjects themselves unable
The key to the behavior of subjects lies not in pent-up anger or aggression, but in the nature of their relationship to authority. They have given themselves to the authority; they see themselves as instruments for the execution of his wishes; once so defined, they are unable to break free.
concentration camps concentration-camp
Even Eichmann was sickened when he toured the concentration camps...
social-behavior action realizing
Only in action can you fully realize the forces operative in social behavior. That is why I am an experimentalist.
survival culture action
But the culture has failed, almost entirely, in inculcating internal controls on actions that have their origin in authority. For this reason, the latter constitutes a far greater danger to human survival.
powerful men views
I started with the belief that every person who came to the laboratory was free to accept or to reject the dictates of authority. This view sustains a conception of human dignity insofar as it sees in each man a capacity for choosing his own behavior. And as it turned out, many subjects did, indeed, choose to reject the experimenter's commands, providing a powerful affirmation of human ideals.
patriotic soldier patriotism
The soldier does not wish to appear a coward, disloyal, or un-American. The situation has been so defined that he can see himself as patriotic, courageous, and manly only through compliance.
puppets firsts steps
And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.
people authority resources
Relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.
responsibility links action
It is easy to ignore responsibility when one is only an intermediate link in a chain of action.
expectations focus acting
Although a person acting under authority performs actions that seem to violate standards of conscience, it would not be true to say that he loses his moral sense. Instead, it acquires a radically different focus. He does not respond with a moral sentiment to the actions he performs. Rather, his moral concern now shifts to a consideration of how well he is living up to the expectations that the authority has of him.
people intuition germany
I would say, on the basis of having observe a thousand people in the experiment and having my own intuition shaped and informed by these experiments, that if a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized American town.
views essence wish
The essence in obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as an instrument for carrying out another person's wishes and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions.