Stanley Milgram

A detailed account of the two millennia of intolerance and persecution suffered by the Jews, from antiquity to the present day.

"Great Thinkers: In Their Own Words" is a 2011 BBC television documentary mini-series created in partnership with The Open University. It explores the impact of 20th-century cultural, political, and scientific icons by mining rare radio and television archives to let these prominent figures speak directly through their own recorded broadcasts.

In the film, we see subjects instructed to administer electric shocks of increasing severity to another person, and observe both obedient and defiant reactions. After the experiment, we witness subjects explain firsthand their actions. Obedience is as relevant today as it was at its publication. As we as a society witness suicide bombings, torture, and gang atrocities, we wonder just how far people will go. Fifty years later, this experiment still resonates as people ask themselves, “Would I pull that lethal switch?” This is the only authentic film footage of Milgram’s famous experiment and is essential to all foundational work in social psychology at the graduate, undergraduate, and high school level.

This compelling film, combining both art film and documentary techniques, evolved out of the landmark Science magazine article Milgram wrote in 1970 that essentially established the field of urban psychology. In the film, Milgram introduces the concepts of urban overload and selective attention and delves into the research of social psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latane, who studied New York City in the aftermath of the shocking murder of Kitty Genovese.

A detailed account of the two millennia of intolerance and persecution suffered by the Jews, from antiquity to the present day.

"Great Thinkers: In Their Own Words" is a 2011 BBC television documentary mini-series created in partnership with The Open University. It explores the impact of 20th-century cultural, political, and scientific icons by mining rare radio and television archives to let these prominent figures speak directly through their own recorded broadcasts.

In the film, we see subjects instructed to administer electric shocks of increasing severity to another person, and observe both obedient and defiant reactions. After the experiment, we witness subjects explain firsthand their actions. Obedience is as relevant today as it was at its publication. As we as a society witness suicide bombings, torture, and gang atrocities, we wonder just how far people will go. Fifty years later, this experiment still resonates as people ask themselves, “Would I pull that lethal switch?” This is the only authentic film footage of Milgram’s famous experiment and is essential to all foundational work in social psychology at the graduate, undergraduate, and high school level.

In the film, we see subjects instructed to administer electric shocks of increasing severity to another person, and observe both obedient and defiant reactions. After the experiment, we witness subjects explain firsthand their actions. Obedience is as relevant today as it was at its publication. As we as a society witness suicide bombings, torture, and gang atrocities, we wonder just how far people will go. Fifty years later, this experiment still resonates as people ask themselves, “Would I pull that lethal switch?” This is the only authentic film footage of Milgram’s famous experiment and is essential to all foundational work in social psychology at the graduate, undergraduate, and high school level.

This compelling film, combining both art film and documentary techniques, evolved out of the landmark Science magazine article Milgram wrote in 1970 that essentially established the field of urban psychology. In the film, Milgram introduces the concepts of urban overload and selective attention and delves into the research of social psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latane, who studied New York City in the aftermath of the shocking murder of Kitty Genovese.