West Point requires all cadets to study Milgram’s obedience findings.
Evidence
One important place where this has been happening is in the U.S. Army, which apparently has taken the lessons of Milgram’s research to heart and acted on it. On November 29, 1985, a college student doing a research paper on the obedience experiments wrote a letter to West Point, asking if Milgram’s research was “considered a vital part of [their] program.” In response, she received a letter, dated December 12, 1985, from Colonel Howard T. Prince II, head of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership. He wrote: “The answer is a definite, yes. All cadets at the United States Military Acad emy are required to take two psychology courses, General Psychology … and Military Leadership… . Both of these courses discuss Milgram’s work and the implications of his findings.” — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 665
Categorization
- XREF: Concrete institutional uptake of Milgram’s experiment, useful alongside the small-exclusive-subgroup literature on authority and conformity. — connects to: Entry into evildoing is gradual self-adaptation rather than Milgram’s sudden agentic shift — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 4042
- SHARE: A dated 1985 letter confirming explicitly that the entire USMA curriculum covers Milgram — niche enough that only someone in military-psychology or obedience research would care.
Broader Connections
- Entry into evildoing is gradual self-adaptation rather than Milgram’s sudden agentic shift
#complicates(0.85) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4042