ABSTRACT
New Haven is a city in Connecticut, USA, with approximately 150,000 residents well known predominantly for being the home of Yale University. It was in New Haven where Stanley Milgram, beginning in 1961, conducted his studies of obedience, which were to lead to one of the most important discoveries of social psychology of the twentieth century (and perhaps of a time period stretching beyond this point). In this chapter, which also serves as an introduction to the whole book, we describe the importance of Milgram’s studies, and the sensation caused by their results, as well as the historical and cultural context of the work done by Milgram and his associates. We also describe the reasons for which we decided to focus on this topic over 50 years after the original experiments.
