How did the Holocaust shape Stanley Milgram’s research questions?

Stanley Milgram’s research into obedience was deeply influenced by his Jewish identity and his acute awareness of the Holocaust. Following the atrocities committed during that period, he sought to understand the psychological factors that lead ordinary people to inflict harm on others when instructed to do so by an authority figure.12

Milgram specifically questioned whether the high levels of compliance seen in Nazi Germany were unique to that culture or if they reflected a more universal human tendency. He initially hypothesized that Americans, who are often characterized by their individualism, would be significantly less likely than Germans to obey orders that caused suffering to others. However, his Milgram experiment revealed that a disturbingly high number of participants were willing to administer what they believed were dangerous electric shocks when prompted by an authority, suggesting that the capacity for such obedience is not limited to a specific national or cultural group.12