ABSTRACT
Psychologists during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s investigated different aspects of human behavior in an attempt to explain how totalitarian* governments (governments that control the citizen's life to an intrusive degree) hold on to power by exploiting human irrationality. Most of these investigators came from the field of social psychology— the study of the ways in which people act in groups and how their individual behavior can be influenced by those around them. Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View is generally considered to fall within the "situationist" school of thought in the field of psychology. Milgram entered psychology when research about the dynamics of group behavior was being explored by the German American psychologist Kurt Lewin. Milgram believed that individuals' social situation, much more than their personality, plays the major role in determining behavior at any particular time. Milgram contributed to the ongoing growth in psychology's understanding of how individuals respond to pressure from other people.
