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EASP Meeting

“Obedience to Authority – Milgram’s Legacy and Emerging Directions”

(9–11 September 2026)

“[…] one who knows that he may dissent knows also that he somehow consents when he does not dissent.”

— Hannah Arendt, Crises of the Republic (1972)

What does obedience mean today?

Sixty-five years after Milgram’s groundbreaking studies, research on obedience to authority has entered a new phase. A “second wave” is unfolding — marked by theoretical innovation, methodological diversification, and renewed conceptual debate.

Yet expansion has brought increasing differentiation. Obedience is variously conceptualized as compliance with an authority figure, blind submission, an agentic state, engaged followership, or hierarchical coordination. Paradigms diverge. Assumptions differ. Findings do not always converge.

This EASP Small Group Meeting brings together scholars across laboratories, theoretical traditions, and methodological approaches to map the current landscape, clarify core mechanisms, and foster meaningful cross-paradigm integration.

In cooperation with the Center for Commemorative Culture at the University of Regensburg and the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial Site, the meeting situates psychological models of obedience within broader societal and historical contexts — including reflection on structures of perpetration as well as historical and contemporary instances of dissent and resistance.

By creating space for rigorous dialogue and interdisciplinary exchange — particularly with historians and educators — the meeting aims not merely to revisit Milgram, but to advance a more coherent and cumulative science of obedience, both within academia and beyond.

The bridge motif in our conference logo — inspired by Regensburg’s historic Stone Bridge (Steinerne Brücke) — symbolizes this ambition: to build conceptual bridges across research groups, paradigms, and disciplines.