Milgram and Obedience

Psychology – and to a lesser extent Sociology – teachers and students generally need to have an understanding of both the mechanics of Milgram’s classic “obedience experiments” and their general implications. However, as recent research has argued (Social psychology textbooks ignore all modern criticisms of Milgram’s “obedience experiments”) this understanding has not necessarily been advanced by a reliance on standard psychology (and indeed sociology) textbooks.

More recently, however, the work of Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher has been instrumental in reassessing both historical and conventional interpretations of Milgram’s work (Milgram and the historians) and in “Questioning Authority” (Haslam, Reicher and Birney, 2016) they take this argument further using historical evidence and the application of social identity theory. This approach is also reflected in their filmed contributions to Beyond Milgram: Obedience and Identity