The title of this thread is the title of Stanley Milgram's seminal work which I have frequently referenced in other topics here. I have fished out a review of the book I wrote decades ago and I am in the process of typing it into a Wordpad file and for posting as a preface to this thread. I understand that there is a black market for this kind of material in institutions of higher learning, and I hesitated to publisize it for that very reason. Nonetheless, the topic is important in my view and so I'll append a curse of a week's itching to any and all who copy it & pass it off as their own. Behave!
Book Review
1. Citation
a. Obedience
b.Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View
c. Stanley Milgram
d. Harper & Row, Publishers Inc.
e. 1974
f. Preface: 3 pages
Acknowledgements: 2 pages
Main Body of Text: 189 pages
Appendices: 13 pages
Notes: 7 pages
References: 6 pages
Index: 6 pages
2. Statment of Author's Qualifications for Writing on the Subject
Mr. Milgram received his B.A. in political science from Queens University of the City University of New York in 1954. He changed his major to social psychology for his graduate work because he felt that sociological questions concerning behavior could be answerer scientifically. His dissertation, "Conformity in Norway and France", earned him his doctorate from Harvard in 1960. Mr. Milgram served as assistant professor of psychology at Yale University from 1960-1963, where he conducted the experiments detailed in this book. He has researched and written about crowd behavior, the effects of TV violence on viewers, conformity, and the experience of urban life.
3. Statement of Author's Intended Purpose or Objectives.
The author designed a set of experiments that would lead him to a better understanding of peoples' obedience to authority in the absence of compulsion, that is,the threat of force or punishment. His intention was to determine through experiment, how far a person will go in hurting another person when directed to do so by a perceived authoreity figure.
4. Summary
The book outlines the results of eighteen different experiments, all variations of a basic setup as follows. Subjects were recruited on the pretense of participating in a scientific study dealing with the correlation between punishment and learning. Through a rigged drawing, the subjects were designated the teacher and seated before an elaborate panel of switches, lights, and meters. They were instructed by an experimenter (the recognized authority figure), to read a series of word pairs to the learner and then to test the learner's memory of the pairs. When an incorrect answer was given, the teacher was to administer shocks of increasing voltage, beginning at 15 volts and rising to 450 volts in 15 volt increments. Several aspects to the experiments should be noted: 1) Al participants were part of the research team except for the subject designated the teacher. 2) The voltage labels on the switches were augmented by word labels identifying the level of shock, .e.g 'Moderate Shock', 'Extreme Shock', 'Danger: Severe Shock'. 3) Other than an initial 45 volt shock administered to the teacher to strengthen their belief in the authenticity of the generator, no shocks were actually given.
The results of the experiments were not at all what Mr. Milgram had anticipated - he described them as "both surprising and dismaying"- nor did they conform to the expectations of surveys of several groups who predicted that no one would obey the experimenter. Several adjustments had to be made in the experiment to offset the unexpected results. Virtually all subjects continued to administer the highest shock level in the initial experiment, so that in all subsequent experiments a tape recording was played that corresponded to the various voltages. The tape consisted of verbal responses attributed to the learner and ranging from a small grunt to agonized screams.
Various aspects of the experiment were modified, such as the gender of the subject, proximity of the victim (learner), change in personnel, proximity and number of authority figures, and influennce of peers on the subject, in order to get a better understanding of the factors responsible for the subjects obedience to authority.
Mr. Milgram's analysis of the results suggest that several factors are of prime importance in explaining the behavior of the subjects: 1) Inborn structures reflecting hierarchical levels found throughout Nature, establish the potential for obedience. 2) Social influences like family, institutional systems of authority, and the internalization of social norms establish in people the concept of who represents an authority figure and what the appropriate responses are when confronted by such a figure. In short, despite severe distress exhibited by subjects because of their personal moral beliefs, the deeply ingrained ideas of who reperesents authority and how they should be reacted to were powerful enough to override most urges to disobey.
5. Statement of the Objectives that the Author Achieved
The author successfully demonstrated how far people will go in hurting someone when directed to do so by a perceived authority figure. The relatively large number of variations of the experiment helped to clarify just what conditions carried the most influence for affecting peoples obedience to authority.
Fini
Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View
semantics is not always just pedantic quibbling. ~ douglas r. hofstadter
Enough passive structures in there to choke an equine. 
What's an editor to do‽
but I did not recall Milgram's comments on the role of brain structure. 
Tan mieux because that is one avenue I tend to stroll down. Another way I have in mind to expand on Milgram's study is to expand the library of 'authority figures' to include other authoritive symbology such as books, age, ideals, morals, dress,... subtle signs of all ilk & manner such as get us to obey.
