Half a century ago, social scientist Stanley Milgram carried out a series of experiments. The "teacher" is told to administer electroshocks in progressively more painful degrees to the "learner." The teacher--unaware that the learner is an actor receiving no shocks at all--is the real focus of the study. These controversial and criticized experiments illustrate how people will obey authority regardless of consequences.

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.

Milgram, Stanley

Stanley Milgram taught social psychology at Yale University and Harvard University before becoming a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His honors and awards include a Ford Foundation fellowship, an -American Association for the Advancement of Science sociopsychological prize, and a Guggenheim fellowship. He died in 1984 at the age of fifty-one.