Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View

“The classic account of the human tendency to follow orders, no matter who they hurt or what their consequences.” — 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 stro...