"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."
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Academics from the United StatesPsychologists from the United StatesPeople from New York CitySociologists from the United StatesStanford University faculty
Original Language: English
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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/Philip_Zimbardo
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Philip Zimbardo
Philip George Zimbardo (March 23, 1933 – October 14, 2024) was a psychologist and a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He was president of the Heroic Imagination Project, famous for his Stanford prison study involving Groupthink processes and for authorship of various introductory psychology books and textbooks for college students, including The Lucifer Effect and The Time Paradox.
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