Behind the Shock Machine (46 page)

13.
    See David Chazan, “Row over ‘Torture’ on French TV,” BBC News, March 18, 2010.

1. THE MAN BEHIND THE MIRROR

1.
     Biographical information about Milgram’s childhood, schooling, travels, and time at Harvard based on information in Thomas Blass,
The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram
(New York: Basic, 2004), 2, 3, 4, 10–15, 33, 57–58, 232–34; and SMP, box 71, folder 293.

2.
     The experiment and findings are discussed in Solomon Asch,
Social Psychology
(New York: Prentice-Hall, 1952), 454–58.

3.
     Henry Gleitman cited in James H. Korn,
Illusions of Reality: A History of Deception in Social Psychology
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 73.

4.
     James Korn noted that Asch was troubled by the ethics of his experiments and devoted more analysis to them than many contemporaries did theirs. Ibid., 74–79.

5.
     Blass,
Man Who Shocked the World
, 33.

6.
     Stanley Milgram, “Nationality and Conformity,”
Scientific American
205, no. 34 (1961): 45–51.

7.
     Stanley Milgram,
The Individual in a Social World: Essays and Experiments
(Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1977), 217.

8.
     Blass,
Man Who Shocked the World
, 57–58.

9.
     SMP, box 14, folder 201.

10.
    SMP, box 1a, folder 1.

11.
    Kurt Danziger explored how Wundt adapted his training in
Constructing the Subject: Historical Origins of Psychological Research
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 17. Robert Farr noted students flocking to Europe in
The Roots of Modern Social Psychology, 1872–1954
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 35.

12.
    Wundt’s views from Farr,
Roots of Modern Social Psychology
, 21.

13.
    See Danziger,
Constructing the Subject
, 41.

14.
    Ibid., 53.

15.
    Ludy T. Benjamin,
A Brief History of Modern Psychology
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 139.

16.
    John Watson quoted in B.R. Hergenhahn,
An Introduction to the History of Psychology
, 6th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009), 406.

17.
    See John B. Watson,
Behaviorism
(New York: W.W. Norton, 1925).

18.
    Clarence J. Karier noted this in
Scientists of the Mind: Intellectual Founders of Modern Psychology
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 130.

19.
    Dorwin Cartwright quoted in Farr,
Roots of Modern Social Psychology
, 6.

20.
    Benjamin,
Brief History of Modern Psychology
, 199.

21.
    See Alfred Marrow,
Practical Theorist: The Life and Work of Kurt Lewin
(New York: Basic, 1969), 128. Marrow defined action research as “the experimental use of social sciences to advance the democratic process.”

22.
    Kenneth Ring, “Experimental Social Psychology: Some Sober Questions About Some Frivolous Values,”
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
3 (1967): 114.

23.
    Korn,
Illusions of Reality
, 46.

24.
    Marrow,
Practical Theorist
, 140. Despite Lewin’s frantic attempts over seven years to find a way of bringing his mother to the United States, he was unable to save her. She was sent to a Polish concentration camp and died there in 1944.

25.
    Korn,
Illusions of Reality
, 42.

26.
    Shelley Patnoe,
A Narrative History of Experimental Social Psychology: The Lewin Tradition
(New York: Springer, 1998), 262.

27.
    Ibid., 261.

28.
    Elliot Aronson, “Adventures in Experimental Social Psychology: Roots, Branches, and Sticky Leaves,” in
Reflections on 100 Years of Experimental Social Psychology
, ed. Aroldo Rodrigues and Robert Levine (New York: Basic, 1999), 87. Successive quotations ibid., 88.

29.
    Vivien Burr,
Social Constructionism
(New York: Routledge, 2003), 14.

30.
    These experiments are cited in Herbert Kelman, “Human Use of Human Subjects: The Problem of Deception in Social Psychological Experiments,”
Psychological Bulletin
67 (1967): 5.

31.
    See Philip M. Taylor,
Munitions of the Mind: A History of Propaganda from the Ancient World to the Present Day
, 3rd ed. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 260.

32.
    During the Cold War, the CIA covertly funded a range of research programs aimed at finding ways to manipulate behavior. Alfred W. McCoy claimed that Milgram’s experiment was secretly funded by the CIA as part of its interest in research on effective torture techniques and, in particular, how to persuade ordinary people to take on the torturer’s role. Thomas Blass and others dismissed this. See Alfred McCoy,
A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 47; and Thomas Blass, “Milgram and the CIA—Not!”
StanleyMilgram.com
,
www.stanleymilgram.com/rebuttal.php
.

33.
    Korn surveyed social psychology articles published between 1930 and 1970 that reported using deception as a research technique and found that the degree and intensity of deception increased from less than 10 percent between 1930 and 1945 to 50 percent in the 1970s. See Korn,
Illusions of Reality
, 24.

34.
    See Elliot Aronson,
Methods of Research in Social Psychology
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990), 83.

35.
    The experiment involving insults is cited in Korn,
Illusions of Reality
, 132; that involving homosexual tendencies is cited in Kelman, “Human Use of Human Subjects,” 4; and that which required the reading of sexually explicit material is cited in Ian Lubek and Henderikus J. Stam, “Ludicro-Experimentation in Social Psychology: Sober Scientific Versus Playful Prescriptions,” in
Trends and Issues in Theoretical Psychology
, ed. Ian Lubek et al. (New York: Springer, 1995), 174.

36.
    Benjamin Harris, “Key Words: A History of Debriefing in Social Psychology,” in
The Rise of Experimentation in American Psychology
, ed. Jill Morawski (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 190.

37.
    Philip Zimbardo, “Experimental Social Psychology: Behaviorism with Minds and Matters,” in
Reflections on 100 Years of Experimental Social Psychology
, 138. Successive quotations ibid.

38.
    SMP, box 17, folder 246.

39.
    SMP, box 1a, folder 4.

40.
    SMP, box 43, folder 126.

41.
    Parker claimed that the experiments would “make his name and destroy his reputation.” See Ian Parker, “Obedience,”
Granta
71, no. 4 (2000): 102. Subsequent quotation, “cited, celebrated—and reviled,” in ibid., 101.

42.
    Ibid., 101.

43.
    Augustine Brannigan, “The Postmodern Experiment: Science and Ontology in Experimental Social Psychology,”
British Journal of Sociology
48, no. 4 (1997): 608.

2. GOING ALL THE WAY

1.
     SMP, box 46, folder 165. The book was Nathaniel Cantor,
The Teaching–Learning Process
(New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1953).

2.
     SMP, box 45, folder 161.

3.
     “Simplicity is the key to effective scientific inquiry. . . . Complicated procedures only get in the way of clear scrutiny of the phenomenon itself. To study obedience most simply, we must create a situation in which one person orders another person to perform an observable action and we must note when obedience to the imperative occurs and when it fails.” Stanley Milgram,
Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View
(London: Tavistock, 1974), 13.

4.
     Wendy McKenna and Suzanne Kessler, “Asking Taboo Questions and Doing Taboo Deeds,” in
The Social Construction of the Person
, ed. K.J. Gergen and K.G. Davis (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1985), 253.

5.
     Thomas Blass,
The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram
(New York: Basic, 2004), 63.

6.
     Nestar Russell, “Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority Experiments: Towards an Understanding of Their Relevance in Explaining Aspects of the Nazi Holocaust,” PhD thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 2009, 43, 44.

7.
     Milgram wrote to his mentor Gordon Allport about comparing obedience. His letter is cited in Blass,
Man Who Shocked the World
, 65. Ian Nicholson notes the content of his funding applications in “Shocking Masculinity: Stanley Milgram,
Obedience to Authority
and the ‘Crisis of Manhood’ in Cold War America,”
Isis
102, no. 2 (2011): 243.

8.
     Russell, “Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority Experiments,” 47.

9.
     SMP, box 43, folder 126. Subsequent quotations ibid.

10.
    SMP, box 45, folder 160.

11.
    SMP, box 75, folder 435.

12.
    Milgram cited in Blass,
Man Who Shocked the World
, 68.

13.
    SMP, box 43, folder 126.

14.
    SMP, box 1a, folder 3.

15.
    SMP, box 23, folder 382.

16.
    SMP, box 46, folder 163.

17.
    SMP, box 1a, folder 5.

18.
    Ibid.

19.
    According to Milgram’s figures, 37.6 percent were skilled and unskilled workers; 44 percent were sales, business, and white-collar workers; 16.8 percent were “professional” (by which he presumably meant college-educated, although he did not explain this anywhere). Twenty-four percent of volunteers were twenty to twenty-nine, 33.6 percent were thirty to thirty-nine, and 42.4 percent were forty to fifty years old. SMP, box 46, folder 163.

20.
    SMP, box 46, folder 163.

21.
    SMP, box 47, folder 12.

22.
    Alan Elms,
Social Psychology and Social Relevance
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), 120.

23.
    SMP, box 61, folder 122.

24.
    Quotations about Williams and McDonough in SMP, box 61, folder 122. Milgram’s comment to subject in long interviews, March 21, 1963, 50, in SMP, box 45, folder 162.

25.
    Milgram in Carol Tavris, “A Sketch of Stanley Milgram: A Man of 1,000 Ideas,”
Psychology Today
8 (1974): 75.

26.
    Alan Elms, “Obedience in Retrospect,”
Journal of Social Issues
51, no. 3 (1995): 21–31, available at
www.ulmus.net/ace/library/obedience.html
.