Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View

Volunteers are invited to a scientific laboratory under the pretence of participating in a study about the effects of punishment on learning. They are instructed by an experimenter to administer an electric shock of increasing intensity every time a ‘learner’, strapped to an electric conductor, makes a mistake. How many, if any, would go right up the scale to 450 Volts? The implications of Stanley Milgram’s extraordinary findings (up to 65 per cent of subjects administered the full shock) are devastating. From the Holocaust to Vietnam and Iraq, “Obedience to Authority” goes some way towards explaining how ordinary people can commit the most horrific of crimes if placed under the influence of a malevolent authority. This title is presented with a new foreword by Jerome Bruner.