The Obedient Switch

Sarah Shock

• 28 januari 2026
• 9783565203253

Samenvatting:

"The Obedient Switch – Would you torture a stranger if a scientist told you to?" revisits the most disturbing psychological experiment of the 20th century. In 1961, Stanley Milgram wanted to understand how ordinary Germans could participate in the Holocaust. He set up a fake study where participants were ordered to administer increasingly painful electric shocks to a person in another room (who was actually an actor) every time they answered a question wrong. Psychologist Sarah Shock analyzes the results that horrified the world: 65% of participants continued to administer shocks up to the lethal 450-volt level, simply because a man in a lab coat said, "The experiment requires that you continue." "The Obedient Switch" is a mirror held up to human nature. It argues that evil is often not the result of sadism, but of a deep-seated inability to disobey authority. It challenges the reader to ask: At what point would I have stopped?