News

07-Dec-2014

1) Only one of the declared foreign speakers will be able to arrive here – the American independent researcher Eugen Tarnow (please, see information about him on our site in the section “Speakers”). Other foreign speakers will make their tele-reports using Skype or ooVoo. We will try record their speeches and to make available to you on the site. Abstracts of all reports are already published on the site, including the Abstract of Plenary lecture of the keynote speaker Professor Paul Hollander. Besides, today the full text of this Plenary lecture also is published on the website.

2) You, probably, already saw the Program of conference which was published a few days ago on the site.

3) You’ll be able to look and buy the book in two languages (English and Russian) “Regina V. Ershova & Alexander Y. Voronov (Eds.) Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Paradigm for 2014. Kolomna, Russia: Moscow Regional State Institute of Humanities and Social Studies. – 284 pp.” in the days of work of our conference. This publication is a unique collection of articles of American, British, French and Russian researchers dedicated to the development of various aspects of one of the leading paradigms of modern social psychology – an experimental obedience paradigm of the famous American psychologist Stanley Milgram (1933 -1984). This book, along with the theoretical works (T. Blass, I. Chaleff, E. Erdos, P. Hollander, S. Levine, H. Perlshtadt, A.N. Poddiakov, C. Stott, E. Tarnow, K. Worthy), also includes the empirical research (L. Bègue, J.-L. Beauvois, D. Courbet, R. Ershova, A. Faye, D. Mantell, O. Mitina, D. Oberlé, R. Panzarella, E. Rasskazova, V. Sorokina, A. Southard, A. Voiskounsky, V. Zeigler-Hill). The book will be released on 9th of December, 2014 – on the day of opening International 2014 OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY CONFERENCE (30 years of Social Psychology without Stanley Milgram, 40 years of his controversial monograph; experimental obedience paradigm: yesterday, today, tomorrow) in Kolomna, Russia.

09-Oct-2014

Professor Paul Hollander from the USA, the sociologist, unfortunately, won’t be able to arrive to us on conference, however, as well as it was planned, at conference opening he will make the plenary lecture “Revisiting the Banality of Evil: Contemporary Political Violence and the Milgram Experiments” [the tele-speech by ooVoo in English with consequent interpretation into Russian; questions and answers will also be in both languages].
Abstract of the lecture may be read and downloaded in the end of the section “Program” of this web-site.

21-Sep-2014

9th or 10th of December American professor Edward Erdos (New York Institute of Technology, USA) will make the report “The Milgram Trap” on one of tele-sessions (Skype or ooVoo or other means of communication) of our conference. “I believe, – Professor E. Erdos wrote in the letter to one of co-organizers of our obedience-conference, – (and Thomas Blass* agrees) that what I have to say here has never been said before – namely that all of Milgram’s experiments consist of two independent phases and that failure to recognize this has been the source of most of the confusion and controversy surrounding his obedience studies.”.
Professor E. Erdos has been a participating contributor to Stuart Levine’s** Obedience-Seminar in Bard College for the past 3 years.

Prof. E. Erdos’ CV and the abstract of his report will be soon placed on our site.

* Member of our Conference Program Committee, Professor Thomas Blass (UMBC, USA) is the world’s leading expert on the study of Stanley Milgram.

** Professor Stuart Levine (Bard College, USA) is member of our Conference Program Committee and he must take part in our conference.

20-Sep-2014

“Today’s fascination with television makes us wonder whether it might not represent an authority capable of leading people in a television studio to inflict cruel acts on others, even though they condemn those acts…

… we transposed Milgram’s famous experimental obedience paradigm to the context of a “real” TV game show, in the studio of a large television production company, with a live audience and no prizes…The results show that obedience to the host is the dominant response, as it is in Milgram’s classic situation.

After this experiment, we conducted a second study… Participants were 35 males and 31 females aged 26–54 from the general population who were contacted by phone 8 months after their participation in the television game show… Our results provide empirical evidence suggesting that individual differences in personality and political variables matter in the explanation of obedience to authority.”

Here (above) were cited several pieces from the abstract of tele-speech (Skype or ooVoo) of the French Professor Didier Courbet at our conference.

Three other French professors were coauthors of the research: Prof. Jean-Léon Beauvois (University of Nice Sophia Antipolis), Prof. Laurent Bègue (University of Grenoble-Alpes), and Prof. Dominique Oberlé (University of Paris X – Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense).

This research was the subject of several television programs that have been highly publicized in several countries (France, Switzerland…). Please, see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DPXcoYxfgs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5nQeKqSdJQ

Professor D. Courbet will show to participants of our conference during the tele-session the excerpts from the TV show; translation into English and Russian will be made by MGOSGI’ professors and students.

Prof. Courbet’s CV and the full abstract of his report will be soon placed on our site.

10-Sep-2014

The surprising event preceded opening of our obedience-conference:
Special Issue of the Journal of Social Issues was published a week ago. This 200-page (14 articles) release is entirely devoted to the subject:
“Milgram at 50: Exploring the Enduring Relevance of Psychology’s most Famous Studies”.
Among authors are the both leading experts of obedience-heritage of Stanley Milgram: American professors Thomas Blass and Arthur G. Miller.
Here are all sections of release:
— Introduction.
— The Gaps In Milgram’s Analysis: New Insights from The Milgram Archives.
— The Richness of Milgram’s Findings: Insights from Empirical and Conceptual Extensions.
— The Significance of Milgram’s Experiments: Obedience, Destructiveness, and Resistance.
— The Meaning of Milgram’s Experiments: Causality, Responsibility, and Context.
— Overview and Commentary.

07-Sep-2014

On December 10, Wednesday,
the 4th Russian-American Skype psychology conference
(a teleconference between Kolomna and New York City) will take place:
in Kolomna – at MSRIHSS (Moscow State Regional Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences)
in terms of our obedience-conference
from 16:00 till 17:00 local time;
in New York – at Fordham university
from 10:00 till 11:00 am (local time)
“Stanley Milgram, the man”, features several psychologists who studied with Dr. Milgram.

03-Sep-2014

American Independent researcher, PhD in physics from MIT, Eugen Tarnow will come to our conference. He will talk about obedience and conformity, surprised about the lack of a societal follow-up on Milgram’s findings and about the ethics of Milgram’s obedience experiments (here is the citation from the abstract of his paper “The Social Engineering Solution to Preventing the Murder in the Milgram Experiment”, Open Ethics Journal, 2008, Vol. 2, 34-39: The Milgram finding was buried by the criticism of the ethics of the experiment iself and it is the purpose of this paper to resurrect it.

31-Aug-2014

Yesterday we got news that our keynote speaker – American Professor Paul Hollander (Paul Hollander), the sociologist – will come to us!
His background (he grew up in Hungary with personal experiences of Nazism and Stalinism) predisposed him to be interested in political violence and repression. Professor Paul Hollander plans to give to us a plenary lecture: “Revisiting the banality of evil, the obedience experiments and present day political violence”.
In addition, he will talk, more informally, about his friendship with Milgram.