Thomas Blass

Dr. Thomas Blass is asocial psychologist and the recognized expert on obedience to authority and has a particular interest in the research of Stanley Milgram.

He was born in Budapest, Hungary during World War II.

Although many of his relatives had been deported to, and murdered in Auschwitz and elsewhere, Dr. Blass survived the war and was taken by his mother to canada and then the USA

He graduated in in mathematics before taking a  Ph.D. in social psychology from Yeshiva University in New York.

He has held research positions at the University of Maryland Psychiatric Institute, Sheppard-Pratt Hospital, and Downstate Medical Center. For most of his career he has been at the Department of Psychology, University of Maryland Baltimore County, where he is currently a Professor of Psychology.

Books

 * Blass, T. (2004). The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram. New York, NY: Basic Books.ISBN 0738203998
 * Blass, T. (Ed.), (2000). Obedience to authority: Current perspectives on the Milgram paradigm. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Book Chapters

 * Blass, T. (2002). Perpetrator behavior as destructive obedience: An evaluation of Stanley Milgram's perspective, the most influential social-psychological approach to the Holocaust. In L. Newman & R. Erber (Eds.). Understanding genocide: The social psychology of the Holocaust. Oxford University Press.
 * Blass, T. (2002). Social psychological perspectives on obedience. International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences.


 * Blass, T. (2000). Stanley Milgram (1933-1984). Encyclopedia of Psychology. American Psychological Association. (Invited article)
 * Blass, T. (1999). Stanley Milgram. In J. A. Garraty (Ed.), American National Biography. Cary, NC: Oxford University Press and American Council of Learned Societies.
 * Blass, T. (1992). The social psychology of Stanley Milgram. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 25, pp. 277-329. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Papers

 * Blass, T. (2002, March/April). The man who shocked the world. Psychology Today, pp. 68-74.


 * Blass, T. (2001, Spring). Stanley Milgram and leadership. Effect, pp. 7-8.


 * Blass, T. & Schmitt, C. (2001). The nature of perceived authority in the Milgram paradigm: Two replications. Current Psychology, 20, 115-121.

Blass, T. (2000). Invited response to review of "Obedience to authority: Current perspectives on the Milgram paradigm." British Journal of Educational Psychology, 70, 624-25.


 * Blass, T. (1999). The Milgram paradigm after 35 years: Some things we now know about obedience to authority. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29, 955-978.
 * Blass, T. (1998). The roots of Milgram's obedience experiments and their relevance to the Holocaust. Analyse & Kritik, 20, 46-53.


 * Blass, T. (1998). Stanley Milgram and his obedience experiments. Clio's Psyche, 4, 109-112.


 * Blass, T. (1996). Attribution of responsibility and trust in Milgram's obedience experiment. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 26, 1529-1535.


 * Blass, T. (1996). The Milgram obedience experiment: Support for a cognitive view of defensive attribution. Journal of Social Psychology, 136, 407-410.


 * Blass, T. (1996). Experimental invention and controversy: The life and work of Stanley Milgram. The General Psychologist, 32, 47-55. [This is a somewhat longer version of the previous reference.]


 * Blass, T. (1996). Stanley Milgram: A life of inventiveness and controversy. In G. Kimble, A. Boneau, & M. Wertheimer (Eds.), Portraits of pioneers in psychology, Vol. 2. Washington, D.C. and Hillsdale, NJ: American Psychological Association and Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.


 * Krackow, A., & Blass, T. (1995). When nurses obey or defy inappropriate physician orders: Attributional differences. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 10, 585-594.


 * Blass, T. (1995). Right-Wing Authoritarianism and role as predictors of attributions about obedience to authority. Personality and Individual Differences, 19, 99-100.


 * Blass, T. (1994). Stanley Milgram (1933-1984). In R. Corsini (Ed.), Encyclopedia of psychology, Second edition. New York: Wiley.


 * Blass, T. (1993). Review of "The roots of evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence," by Ervin Staub. Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 7, 276-280.


 * Blass, T. (1993). Psychological perspectives on the perpetrators of the Holocaust: The role of situational pressures, personal dispositions, and their interactions. Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 7, 30-50.


 * Blass, T. (1991). Understanding behavior in the Milgram obedience experiment: The role of personality, situations, and their interactions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 398-413.