The Hidden Code of Connection – Part 3 : Justifying the Unthinkable: Authority, Aggression, and Moral Compromise
The Hidden Code of Connection 1 Architects of Reality: How the Social Mind Predicts the World 2 Compliance and Conversion: Navigating the Pressures of Social Influence 3 Justifying the Unthinkable: Authority, Aggression, and Moral Compromise 4 Us vs. Them: The Psychology of Intergroup Conflict and Identity 5 Hardwired for Affiliation: Love, Loss, and the Need to Belong ← Series Home The Insidious Power of Obedience to Authority The study of social influence reveals a capacity for compliance and conformity, but an extreme and particularly pernicious form is obedience to authority. Driven by the need to understand the atrocities of the Holocaust, Stanley Milgram conducted his famous obedience studies at Yale in the 1960s to determine how normal individuals could follow immoral orders. In the study, participants (“teachers”) were required to administer increasing levels of electric shocks to a confederate (“learner”) for incorrect word pairings, believing the shocks were real and potentially dangerous. ...