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Conformity and Independence
This film examines classic research asking why people conform, obey, and dissent in various social situations and presents social psychology’s main findings and principles in the areas of conformity and independence. Sherif’s experiments on norm formation, Asch’s work on group pressure to conform and Crutchfield’s variation, Kelman’s three processes of compliance, and Moscovici’s theoretical views are all covered.

About Stanley Milgram
Stanley Milgram became a controversial and compelling public figure as a result of his shocking 1961 experiment Obedience to Authority, which revealed the extraordinary actions average people will take to follow orders. When published, the world was reeling as new information about the Holocaust came to light through the Eichmann trials. The film Obedience, which documented the experiment and provided visual evidence of the results, began Milgram’s interest in film as an educational tool. He went on to create five more films over the course of his career on other social psychology topics.

Milgram conducted research that includes the well-known studies in small world (the source of “Six Degrees of Separation”), the lost-letter technique, mental maps of cities, the familiar stranger, and other important work central to the study of social psychology. Each of these films provides arresting visual imagery to supplement classroom instruction and discussion around a variety of essential themes, figures, and experiments in social psychology, making even complex topics accessible to a wide variety of students.