Authority the Notion of Obedience Research Paper

He also feels as though authority is contextual in that it is something people learn to respect and wield differently in different environments and social realities (Burger, 2009). This is to say that the Milgram studies were snapshots of a very specific culture and time period, as Blass suggests, and that they may not represent the ultimate knowledge of the concepts of obedience and authority as many researchers and academics once thought (Berger, 2009). This interesting in that it suggests flexibility in these concepts and the way humans experience them in their everyday lives that extends through historical and other contexts.

Milgram's work is certainly groundbreaking and has helped to define how researchers and academics view the concepts of perception, obedience, and authority. Though his research is often criticized for other reasons, Milgram's work only represents a small piece of the larger picture of the innate human dynamics related to authority and obedience. Certainly these concepts are necessary for the functionality of everyday life as humans, but they are much more complex than Milgram's studies suggest. Contemporary psychologists have used Milgram and others' work as a foundation for understanding these concepts but human beings are such complex creatures that it may be possible to yield different results in differing societal and individual contexts, as predicted by contemporary psychologists Blass and Burger.

Works Cited

Baumrind, Diana. (1964). "A Review of Stanley Milgram's experiments on obedience "American Psychologist 19, 421-423.

Blass, Thomas. (1999). "The Milgram Paradigm After 35 Years: Some Things We Now Know About Obedience to Authority." Journal of Applied Social Psychology,

Vol. 29, 955 -- 978.

Burger, Jerry M. (2009). "Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today?"

American Psychologist, Vol. 64, 1-11.

Milgram, Stanley. (1964).…