Reicher, Stephen, Alexander Haslam, and Arthur G. Miller. What Makes a Person a Perpetrator?

Introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Social Issues about Stanley Milgram’s experiments (see key texts). Social psychologists Reicher, Haslam, and Miller revisit the experiments with a critical eye, but also acknowledge their importance. They propose that commitment is a better explanation for the subjects’ behaviour than the “agentic state” as argued by Milgram and introduce new creative ways of overcoming the ethical barriers of the original experiments. They also lay out the structure of the rest of the special issue.

Reicher, Stephen D., S. Alexander Haslam, and Arthur G. Miller. “What Makes a Person a Perpetrator? The Intellectual, Moral, and Methodological Arguments for Revisiting
Milgram’s Research on the Influence of Authority.” Journal of Social Issues 70, no. 3 (2014): 393-408.