Psychology

Stanley Milgram‘s famous electric shock experiments sought to find out how far ordinary people would go in obeisance to an authority figure. Participants played the part of teachers who had to deliver increasingly powerful electric shocks to learners who didn’t...

The results of Milgram’s electric shock experiment showed that ordinary people show “willingness” to go to "almost any lengths" on the command of an authoritative figure. This shows that obedience is related to responsibility and that people are more willing to comply...

A decade after Milgram’s obedience experiments his high school classmate Philip Zimbardo devised the Stanford prison experiment o examine another aspect of what makes people act badly. The 24 participants, students at Stanford University, were randomly divided into...

The Stanford prison experiment was infamous for the disturbing behavior shown by the participants, who were given no choice but to submit to authority figures. However, it also showed dramatically what would happen when good people were placed in an evil situation. In...

The studies by Asch, Milgram and Zimbardo examined the social forces of conformance, obedience, and situation that could influence our actions, but didn’t provide a complete explanation for aggressiveness and anti-social behavior. Some psychologists, such as Konrad...