Stanley Milgram

Obedience to Authority

1. IDEA 1

   Ordinary people obeyed harmful orders

   Milgram describes his experiments in which volunteers were told to give increasingly strong electric shocks to a learner, who was actually an actor. Many continued to the highest level when instructed by an authority figure.

2. IDEA 2

   The setup tested obedience

   Volunteers played teachers and believed shocks were real punishments for wrong answers. Milgram designed the study to see how far people would go in obeying an authority against their conscience.

3. IDEA 3

   Distance from the victim matters

   Milgram ran many variations. When the learner was in the same room or the teacher had to touch them, obedience dropped. Being closer to the victim's suffering made it harder to continue.

All 8 ideas from Obedience to Authority →