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Stanley Milgram: 2 ideas worth knowing

2 ideas from Stanley Milgram, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

• Ordinary people delivered shocks they thought were lethal because a man in a coat said to

  In 1961, Stanley Milgram told volunteers to give an unseen 'learner' increasingly severe electric shocks every time he answered wrong. Despite cries of pain from the next room, 65%…

  — Stanley Milgram, Behavioral Study of Obedience

• Six degrees of separation started as a chain-letter experiment

  In 1967, Stanley Milgram mailed folders to strangers in Nebraska and asked them to forward each one toward a specific stockbroker in Boston, passing it only to someone they knew pe…

  — Stanley Milgram and Jeffrey Travers, An Experimental Study of the Small World Problem

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