Thomas Blass is an internationally recognized expert on obedience to authority and on the research and legacy of Stanley Milgram. A Holocaust survivor born in Budapest, Hungary, during World War II, Dr. Blass was a child when the Nazis occupied his country in 1944 and murdered 550,000 of his fellow Hungarian Jews. Following the war, Dr. Blass left Hungary together with his mother. After spending a couple of years in a displaced persons camp near Salzburg, Austria, they emigrated to Toronto, Canada, where Dr. Blass spent part of his childhood. He relocated to the United States for his secondary and higher education and stayed on to make it his permanent home.

After receiving his B.A. in mathematics and Ph.D. in social psychology from Yeshiva University, Dr. Blass 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 Professor of Psychology.

In addition to his interests in obedience and the work of Stanley Milgram, Dr. Blass has researched a variety of topics over the years, including tactics of social influence, attributional processes, the interaction of personality and situational factors in social behavior, scale development of personality, attitudinal, and other self-report measures relevant to social behavior, and psychological perspectives on the Holocaust.

Primary Interests:

Aggression, Conflict, Peace
Attitudes and Beliefs
Causal Attribution
Personality, Individual Differences
Persuasion, Social Influence

Aggression, Conflict, Peace
Attitudes and Beliefs
Causal Attribution

Personality, Individual Differences
Persuasion, Social Influence

Books:

Blass, T. (2004). The man who shocked the world: The life and legacy of Stanley Milgram. New York: Basic Books.
Blass, T. (Ed.). (2000). Obedience to authority: Current perspectives on the Milgram paradigm. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Blass, T. (Ed.). (1977). Personality variables in social behavior. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Blass, T. (Ed.). (1976). Contemporary social psychology: Representative readings. Itasca, Ill.: F. E. Peacock Publishers.
Milgram, S. [Blass, T., Editor] (2010). The individual in a social world: Essays and experiments (3rd expanded ed.). London: Pinter & Martin.

Journal Articles:

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. (1996). Attribution of responsibility and trust in the Milgram 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. (1995). Right-Wing Authoritarianism and role as predictors of attributions about obedience to authority. Personality and Individual Differences, 19, 99-100.
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.
Blass, T. (1984). Social psychology and personality: Toward a convergence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 1013-1027.
Blass, T., & Schmitt, C. (2001). The nature of perceived authority in the Milgram paradigm: Two replications. Current Psychology, 20, 115-121.
Hahn, J., & Blass, T. (1997). Dating partner preferences: A function of similarity of love styles. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 12, 595-610.
Krackow, A., & Blass, T. (1995). When nurses obey or defy inappropriate physician orders: Attributional differences. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 10, 585-594.

Other Publications:

Blass, T. (2002). The man who shocked the world. Psychology Today, 68-74.

Courses Taught:

Applied Social Psychology
Research Design and Analysis II
Social Psychology

Applied Social Psychology
Research Design and Analysis II

Social Psychology

Thomas Blass
Department of Psychology
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
1000 Hilltop Circle
Baltimore, MD 21250
United States

Phone: (410) 455-2428
Fax: (410) 455-1055