"It becomes clear that the Asch, Milgram and Zimbardo experiments replicated, in a compressed time, the dynamics of authority and groupthink that play a critical role in our socialization. Asch showed that once the standard is set, people will adopt it and go along with it, even if it is illogical. When the stakes are raised, as they were in Milgram's work, people may struggle with unethical commands, but the majority still obey. And when authorities set parameters but leave the decision-making to the rest of us, we still have a tendency to impose strict control on those we consider deviant. All of these findings affirm the power of culture, socialization, and our widespread fear that we will be judged and punished. Since human beings have a desperate need for safety, approval, and belonging (which yields access to group resources), the worst kind of punishment is ostracism. This shunning may be subtle or extreme."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Psychologists from the United StatesJews from the United StatesHumanistsPeople from New York CitySociologists from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Toni Raiten-D'Antonio, in Ugly as Sin : The Truth about How We Look and Finding Freedom from Self-Hatred (2010), Ch. 8 : Difference as Deviance p. 89
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stanley_Milgram
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Stanley Milgram
Stanley Milgram (15 August 1933 – 20 December 1984) was an American social psychologist famous for his controversial study known as the Milgram Experiment on obedience to authority figures, conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale, and for the small-world experiment (the source of the six degrees of separation concep
10 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Stanley Milgram →
Related Quotes
"If you think it is easy to violate social constraints, get onto a bus and sing out loud. Full-throated song now, no h…"
"I would say, on the basis of having observe a thousand people in the experiment and having my own intuition shaped an…"
"It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with percep…"
"The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority."
"When an individual wishes to stand in opposition to authority, he does best to find support for his position from oth…"
"Each individual possesses a conscience which to a greater or lesser degree serves to restrain the unimpeded flow of i…"
"The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as …"
"While I was a subject in 1964, though I believed that I was hurting someone, I was totally unaware of why I was doing…"
"The Milgram experiments asked participants to play the role of a “teacher,” who was responsible for administering ele…"
"… Hassan promotes the BITE model as a scientific method for identifying “destructive cults,” claiming it can distingu…"