Frasi di Stanley Milgram

Stanley Milgram è stato uno psicologo statunitense che trascorse la sua carriera di ricercatore e professore presso le università Yale e Harvard, per poi trasferirsi alla City University di New York.



Ideatore di raffinate tecniche di ricerca, è autore di vari contributi che riguardano la vita nelle grandi metropoli, la relazione tra il potere di condizionamento esercitato dalla televisione e i comportamenti antisociali. Ma il suo nome è soprattutto legato agli studi riguardanti la determinazione del comportamento individuale, da parte di un sistema gerarchico e autoritario che impone obbedienza. Nel 1961 egli condusse un celebre esperimento della durata di un'ora, presso i locali dell'Interaction Laboratory dell'Università di Yale, teso a verificare il livello di aderenza agli ordini impartiti da un'autorità, nel momento in cui tali ordini entrano in conflitto con la coscienza e la dimensione morale dell'individuo. Tale esperimento è noto come esperimento di Milgram.

La sua vita e le sue ricerche vengono raccontate nel film biografico Experimenter, diretto da Michael Almereyda.

✵ 15. Agosto 1933 – 20. Dicembre 1984
Stanley Milgram: 11 citazioni0 Mi piace

Stanley Milgram: Frasi in inglese

“When an individual wishes to stand in opposition to authority, he does best to find support for his position from others in his group.”

Stanley Milgram

Origine: Obedience to Authority : An Experimental View (1974), p. 121
Contesto: When an individual wishes to stand in opposition to authority, he does best to find support for his position from others in his group. The mutual support provided by men for each other is the strongest bulwark we have against the excesses of authority. (Not that the group is always on the right side of the issue. Lynch mobs and groups of predatory hoodlums remind us that groups may be vicious in the influence they exert.)

“The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.”

Stanley Milgram

Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (1974), ch. 1: The Dilemma of Obedience
Obedience to Authority : An Experimental View (1974)

“It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.”

Stanley Milgram

As quoted in The Social Dimensions Of Law And Justice In Contemporary India (1979) by V. R. Krishna Iyer
Contesto: It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation. The fact that obedience is often a necessity in human society does not diminish our responsibility as citizens. Rather, it confers on us a special obligation to place in positions of authority those most likely to use it humanely. And people are inventive. The variety of political forms we have seen in history are only several of many possible political arrangements. Perhaps the next step is to invent and to explore political forms that will give conscience a better chance to resist errant authority.

“It is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.”

Stanley Milgram

Origine: Obedience to Authority : An Experimental View (1974), p. 205
Contesto: The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.

“If you think it is easy to violate social constraints, get onto a bus and sing out loud.”

Stanley Milgram

Psychology in Today's World (1975), p. 314
Contesto: If you think it is easy to violate social constraints, get onto a bus and sing out loud. Full-throated song now, no humming. Many people will say it's easy to carry out this act, but not one in a hundred will be able to do it.
The point is not to think about singing, but to try to do it. Only in action can you fully realize the forces operative in social behavior. That is why I am an experimentalist.

“The variety of political forms we have seen in history are only several of many possible political arrangements. Perhaps the next step is to invent and to explore political forms that will give conscience a better chance to resist errant authority.”

Stanley Milgram

As quoted in The Social Dimensions Of Law And Justice In Contemporary India (1979) by V. R. Krishna Iyer
Contesto: It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation. The fact that obedience is often a necessity in human society does not diminish our responsibility as citizens. Rather, it confers on us a special obligation to place in positions of authority those most likely to use it humanely. And people are inventive. The variety of political forms we have seen in history are only several of many possible political arrangements. Perhaps the next step is to invent and to explore political forms that will give conscience a better chance to resist errant authority.

“Only in action can you fully realize the forces operative in social behavior. That is why I am an experimentalist.”

Stanley Milgram

Psychology in Today's World (1975), p. 314
Contesto: If you think it is easy to violate social constraints, get onto a bus and sing out loud. Full-throated song now, no humming. Many people will say it's easy to carry out this act, but not one in a hundred will be able to do it.
The point is not to think about singing, but to try to do it. Only in action can you fully realize the forces operative in social behavior. That is why I am an experimentalist.

“Lynch mobs and groups of predatory hoodlums remind us that groups may be vicious in the influence they exert.”

Stanley Milgram

Origine: Obedience to Authority : An Experimental View (1974), p. 121
Contesto: When an individual wishes to stand in opposition to authority, he does best to find support for his position from others in his group. The mutual support provided by men for each other is the strongest bulwark we have against the excesses of authority. (Not that the group is always on the right side of the issue. Lynch mobs and groups of predatory hoodlums remind us that groups may be vicious in the influence they exert.)

“Each individual possesses a conscience which to a greater or lesser degree serves to restrain the unimpeded flow of impulses destructive to others.”

Stanley Milgram

Origine: Obedience to Authority : An Experimental View (1974), p. 188
Contesto: Each individual possesses a conscience which to a greater or lesser degree serves to restrain the unimpeded flow of impulses destructive to others. But when he merges his person into an organizational structure, a new creature replaces autonomous man, unhindered by the limitations of individual morality, freed of humane inhibition, mindful only of the sanctions of authority.

“I would say, on the basis of having observe a thousand people in the experiment and having my own intuition shaped and informed by these experiments, that if a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized American town.”

Stanley Milgram

Interview on Sixty Minutes (31 March 1979)
Actual quote, which can be heard in Discovery Channel's Curiosity: How Evil Are You?: I would say -- on the basis of having observed a thousand people in the experiment, and having my own intuition shaped and informed by these experiments -- that if a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would be able to find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized American town.

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