Stanley Milgram is famous because of his obedience studies. Less well known is his amazing creativity and interest in everyday behaviour. The dropped letters study probably would not work today because we rarely write to each other, but we can still see the originality in the experimental design. Imagine that you are walking down the road and you come across a letter on the ground that looks like it hasn’t been posted. Do you presume it has been dropped and post it in a nearby postbox or do you leave it where it is?
Milgram dropped 600 letters of which 232 were posted and arrived at their destination. The twist in the study was who the letters were addressed to. There were four addresses used on the dropped letters: Medical Research Associates, a private individual, The Communist Party and the Nazi Party.
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