Further Reading — Chapter 37: Group Dynamics, Conformity, and Collective Behavior

Foundational Academic Sources

Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371–378. The original publication of the obedience research — the experimental design, the quantitative findings, and Milgram's initial interpretation. Available in most institutional libraries; accessible to motivated general readers. Read alongside Milgram's 1974 book for the full account.

Latané, B., & Darley, J. M. (1968). Group inhibition of bystander intervention in emergencies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 10(3), 215–221. The foundational bystander effect paper — the seizure experiment that established diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance as mechanisms. The experimental design is elegant and worth understanding in detail.

Janis, I. L. (1972). Victims of Groupthink: A Psychological Study of Foreign-Policy Decisions and Fiascoes. Houghton Mifflin. Janis's original groupthink analysis — applying the concept to the Bay of Pigs, Pearl Harbor, and Vietnam War decision-making. The historical case studies are more compelling and accessible than the abstract framework and are worth reading first. Updated as Groupthink (2nd ed., 1982).

Zajonc, R. B. (1965). Social facilitation. Science, 149(3681), 269–274. Zajonc's one-page paper proposing the drive theory of social facilitation — among the most cited papers in social psychology. Very brief and accessible; provides the theoretical resolution to contradictory early social facilitation findings.

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. Edmondson's foundational research establishing psychological safety as a predictor of team learning behavior. Technical but accessible; the defining paper on psychological safety in organizational contexts.

Ringelmann, M. (1913). Research on animate sources of power: The work of man. Annales de l'Institut National Agronomique, 12(2e série), 1–40. The original social loafing finding — published in French; accessible in English through secondary sources. The rope-pulling paradigm established the basic pattern replicated across dozens of subsequent studies.

Books for General Readers

Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. Harper & Row. Milgram's full account of the obedience research — the experimental variations, his interpretation of the findings, and his reflection on the implications. Essential reading; more humanizing and more disturbing than secondary accounts. Milgram treats his participants as complex people rather than data points.

Janis, I. L. (1982). Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes (2nd ed.). Houghton Mifflin. The updated edition of Janis's groupthink analysis — adding the Watergate decision-making as a case study. More comprehensive than the 1972 original; the prevention strategies are more developed. Accessible and important for anyone who participates in organizational decision-making.

Surowiecki, J. (2004). The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations. Doubleday. The popular account of collective intelligence — when crowds are wise and when they're not. The conditions for wisdom (diversity, independence, decentralization, aggregation) are clearly explained and applied to a range of domains. Accessible and practically useful.

Zimbardo, P. (2007). The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. Random House. Philip Zimbardo's account of the Stanford Prison Experiment and its relationship to situationism — the argument that ordinary situations can produce extraordinary evil. Substantial and somewhat tendentious; the situationist argument is important but Zimbardo's methodological limitations are acknowledged more fully in critics than in the book itself. Read alongside critiques for a complete picture.

Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Wiley. Edmondson's accessible book for practitioners — how to build psychological safety, what it looks like in practice, and why it matters for organizational performance. The practical section is more directly usable than the research-heavy academic papers.

Darley, J. M., & Latané, B. (1970). The Unresponsive Bystander: Why Doesn't He Help? Appleton-Century-Crofts. Darley and Latané's full account of the bystander effect research — the experimental program, the mechanisms, and the implications. More accessible than journal articles; the treatment of diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance is complete and practically oriented.

Le Bon, G. (1895/1995). The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. Transaction Publishers. Le Bon's foundational analysis of crowd psychology — influential, historically important, and significantly wrong about most of what it claims. Read as intellectual history: the view of collective behavior it describes shaped political science, propaganda theory, and popular psychology for decades. Reading it alongside Emergent Norm Theory critiques is instructive.

On Obedience and Its Aftermath

Burger, J. M. (2009). Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today? American Psychologist, 64(1), 1–11. Jerry Burger's partial replication of Milgram's research (up to 150 volts, the point where the learner demanded release) — published to address questions about whether the findings still apply. He found 70% compliance to 150 volts; extrapolation suggests the basic finding is still operative. Accessible.

Haney, C., Banks, C., & Zimbardo, P. (1973). Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison. International Journal of Criminology and Penology, 1(1), 69–97. The Stanford Prison Experiment paper — worth reading carefully and alongside the critiques, including Le Texier's (2019) historical analysis that documents demand characteristics and Zimbardo's direct role in escalating guard behavior. The research is important and flawed simultaneously.

The Character Reading Lists

Jordan is working through: - Groupthink (Janis, 2nd ed.) — the Bay of Pigs chapter heavily annotated; journal note: "The pattern I saw in the escalation recommendation wasn't unusual. It was the mechanism. Which means it will keep happening unless I keep building against it." - The Fearless Organization (Edmondson) — using the implementation chapters to refine the Customer Journey Council's structural changes; shared with Rivera for joint review

Amara is working through: - Obedience to Authority (Milgram) — reading slowly; struck by the participant accounts where they clearly wanted to stop and continued anyway; journal note: "The agentic state is not a dramatic sudden shift. It's the gradual accumulation of compliance in small increments. That's what I was doing in supervision." - The Wisdom of Crowds (Surowiecki) — reading the chapters on independence and aggregation for application to peer group process; noted the conditions for collective foolishness as a checklist for avoiding them in the peer group's case-discussion format