Stanley Milgram (1933–84) was an American social psychologist. He was famous for his controversial “Milgram Experiment” on obedience to authority figures, conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale.
Born in the Bronx in New York City, Milgram studied political science at Queens College. Upon graduation, he received a Ford Foundation fellowship at Harvard University, where he earned a doctorate in social psychology in 1960. His Harvard dissertation was the “small-world experiment,” the genesis of the six degrees of separation concept—that any person can be connected to any other person through a chain of acquaintances with no more than five intermediaries.
Milgram taught at Yale 1960–63, Harvard University 1963–66, and City University Graduate Center 1966–84. At Yale, Milgram conducted the “Milgram Experiment,” investigating the degree to which ordinary people would relent with the orders of authority when those orders went against conscience. Milgram also created a technique for creating interactive hybrid social agents called cyranoids, which examine aspects of social- and self-perception.
Milgram’s works include Obedience to Authority (1974) and The Individual in a Social World: Essays and Experiments (1977.) American social psychologist Thomas Blass wrote the biography The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram (2004.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Stanley Milgram
Each individual possesses a conscience which to a greater or lesser degree serves to restrain the unimpeded flow of impulses destructive to others.
—Stanley Milgram
The state produced in the laboratory may be likened to a light doze, compared to the profound slumber induced by the preponent authority system of a national government.
—Stanley Milgram
Topics: Authority
It is easy to ignore responsibility when one is only an intermediate link in a chain of action.
—Stanley Milgram
Topics: Responsibility
It may be that we are puppets-puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.
—Stanley Milgram
Topics: Awareness
The key to the behavior of subjects lies not in pent-up anger or aggression, but in the nature of their relationship to authority. They have given themselves to the authority; they see themselves as instruments for the execution of his wishes; once so defined, they are unable to break free.
—Stanley Milgram
Topics: Authority
The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.
—Stanley Milgram
Topics: Responsibility, Authority
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Carol Dweck American Psychologist
Henry Adams American Historian
Steven Pinker Canadian Psychologist
George Steiner American Culture Critic
Henri Nouwen Dutch Catholic Priest
Ashley Montagu British-American Anthropologist
Paul Samuelson American Economist
Daniel Goleman American Psychologist, Author
Lionel Trilling American Critic
John Quincy Adams American Head of State