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24 December 2008

Blind obedience to authority

Researchers at a California university repeated the famous 1961 Milgram experiment on authority.

They got the same result.

“Although one must be cautious when making the leap from laboratory studies to complex social behaviours such as genocide, understanding the social psychological factors that contribute to people acting in unexpected and unsettling ways is important,” [the researcher] wrote.

There’s a fairly lengthy – but readable summary of another researcher’s commentary on repeating the experiments as well as the article from American Psychologist in which Jerry Burger reports on his work.

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