In the early 1960s, a deceptively simple question took shape inside a laboratory at Yale University: how far would an ordinary person go if instructed by an authority figure to harm someone else? The ...

In the early 1960s, psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a controversial study in which participants were led to believe they were administering... Taking A Closer Look At Milgram's Shocking ...

Most regular people are capable of obeying an authority figure’s commands to the point of killing an innocent other. This is the bottom line of Stanley Milgram’s (1963) famous research into the nature ...

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 ...

“We were only following orders” – it was the defence used by many Nazis in the wake of the Holocaust, and appeared to be backed up by a famous experiment. Sign up for the top news stories every day to ...

During the first half of the 20th century, Europeans were subjected to extreme human brutality. Millions of people were killed in the first World War, millions of people were killed by communists ...

Humans are hard-wired to adjust to changing circumstances. And that’s why terrible changes can occur slowly without much protest. By Tali Sharot and Cass R. Sunstein A new book by Eyal Press examines ...

Most regular people are capable of obeying an authority figure’s commands to the point of killing an innocent other. This is the bottom line of Stanley Milgram’s (1963) famous research into the nature ...