There’s been a lot written about psychology professor Jerry Burger’s recent replication of the famous “obedience” experiments first carried out by Stanley Milgram in the early 1960s. Here’s Burger’s paper in which he reports that obedience rates are almost the same today as they were nearly 50 years ago.
Wikipedia’s page on this experiment has an excellent summary of the methodology and results of the original study if you’re not familiar with it.
It’s a testament to the importance of the original obedience experiment that many who know nothing else about psychology have at least heard of it, and it’s common knowledge that Milgram found that a startlingly high proportion of ordinary volunteers were willing to administer very strong “shocks” to an innocent victim, on the orders of the experimenter. But there’s much more to the “Milgram Experiment” than many people realize. So – read on. That’s an order.
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