“It’s not surprising that in these studies people conformed, because…they’re being pulled in two directions, it’s authority, they might get in trouble or they want to be what’s called socially ...

Some psychological experiments are so profound in what they demonstrate about human nature that they end up assuming an iconic status in popular culture. Three of the most famous experiments to have ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American Ever since social psychologist Stanley ...

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of 50 stories this year that will highlight Greater New Haven. “Persons Needed for a Study of Memory,” read the half-page ad in the New Haven Register on ...

More than 50 years ago, American social psychologist Stanley Milgram found that, when prodded by someone in charge, just about every one of us would do something that most would find deeply disturbing ...

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...

Adolf Eichmann’s trial for Nazi war crimes captivated the world in 1961. Coolly, and without regret, Eichmann acknowledged the horrors he had committed, defending them as the acts of an obedient ...

The playfully dead-serious drama Experimenter depicts the life of Stanley Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard), the Yale social scientist who, in 1961, directed his subjects (“teachers”) to deliver shocks of ...

Each of us is programmed to obey authority, even if that authority commands us to do evil. That was the controversial finding of a series of psychological experiments done in the 1960s, now known ...