Contesting the “nature” of conformity: what Milgram and Zimbardo's studies really show

Alexander Haslam; Stephen David Reicher

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001426

Contesting the “nature” of conformity: what Milgram and Zimbardo's studies really show

Alexander Haslam, Stephen David Reicher

School of Psychology and Neuroscience

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Abstract

Understanding of the psychology of tyranny is dominated by classic studies from the 1960s and 1970s: Milgram's research on obedience to authority and Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment. Supporting popular notions of the banality of evil, this research has been taken to show that people conform passively and unthinkingly to both the instructions and the roles that authorities provide, however malevolent these may be. Recently, though, this consensus has been challenged by empirical work informed by social identity theorizing. This suggests that individuals' willingness to follow authorities is conditional on identification with the authority in question and an associated belief that the authority is right.

Original language	English
Article number	e1001426
Journal	PLoS Biology
Volume	10
Issue number	11
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001426
Publication status	Published - 20 Nov 2012

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10.1371/journal.pbio.1001426

HaslamReicher2012pbio1001426NatureofConformity
© 2012 Haslam, Reicher. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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Cite this

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