Behind the Shock Machine (49 page)

18.
    Ian Nicholson discussed the effect of the Cold War on American masculinity in “Shocking Masculinity: Stanley Milgram,
Obedience to Authority
and the ‘Crisis of Manhood’ in Cold War America,”
Isis
102, no. 2 (2011): 238–68. He also pointed out that Marvel comics played a role in counteracting this anxiety—the depictions of conformist, suburban men tearing off their suits to reveal superhuman masculine powers were a form of wishful fantasy. The quotation appears on 251.

19.
    Milgram used the phrase “a kind of flobby moral character” to describe subjects’ willingness to follow orders in long interviews, March 21, 1963, 37, in SMP, box 155a.

20.
    Milgram in an unpublished 1977 interview with Maury Silver, in SMP, box 23, folder 382.

21.
    SMP, box 46, folder 163.

22.
    Milgram had not made mention of any plans to conduct follow-up interviews to the NSF, likely because he didn’t plan to conduct any until Yale insisted.

23.
    Long interviews, March 21, 1963, 56, 57.

24.
    SMP, box 45, folder 162.

25.
    Twenty-one of these were obedient subjects, and eleven were disobedient.

26.
    Long interviews, February 28, 1963, 16, 10, 19, in SMP, box 45, folder 162.

27.
    Long interviews, March 14, 1963, 21, in SMP, box 45, folder 162.

28.
    Errera’s reassurances in long interviews, March 21, 1963, 3; March 28, 1963, 7. Exchange with man also in March 21 conversation, 29.

29.
    Long interviews, March 21, 1963, 60.

30.
    Long interviews, March 21, 1963, 48.

31.
    Long interviews, March 14, 1963, 52–55.

32.
    Long interviews, March 14, 1963, 57.

33.
    Long interviews, March 21, 1963, 3, 38.

34.
    SMP, box 45, folder 159.

35.
    SMP, box 43, folder 128.

36.
    Paul Errera’s report was not published until 1972. See Errera’s report in Jay Katz,
Experimentation with Human Beings
(New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1972), 400.

37.
    Claude Errera, by e-mail, October 17, 2011.

9. THE ETHICAL CONTROVERSY

1.
     Thomas Blass,
The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram
(New York: Basic, 2004), 136.

2.
     SMP, box 1a, folders 8 and 9.

3.
     Quoted in Kirsten Fermaglich,
American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares: Early Holocaust Consciousness and Liberal America, 1957–65
(Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2006), 108.

4.
     Information about media outlets in SMP, box 46, folder 165. Fermaglich notes the interest generated through the UPI wire service in
American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares
, 108.

5.
     SMP, box 46, folder 165.

6.
     SMP, box 45, folder 160.

7.
     Fermaglich,
American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares
, 109.

8.
     
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
editorial and Milgram’s response in SMP, box 55, folder 9.

9.
     SMP, box 1a, folder 10. Erich Fromm was a bestselling author, whose book
Escape from Freedom
(1941) “delved deeply into the psychology of Nazism,” as author Andrew R. Heinze noted in
Jews and the American Soul: Human Nature in the Twentieth Century
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 281. Fromm’s later book
The Art of Loving
(1956) would sell half a million copies in English by the end of the 1960s.

10.
    Ibid.

11.
    Diana Baumrind, “Some Thoughts on the Ethics of Research: After Reading Milgram’s ‘Behavioral Study of Obedience,’”
American Psychologist
19, no. 6 (1964): 421–23.

12.
    SMP, box 18, folder 263.

13.
    SMP, box 62, folder 126. This document could have been drafted to support his reapplication for APA membership. Alternatively, it could have been early notes for a draft of his book.

14.
    SMP, box 17, folder 246.

15.
    Milgram in an unpublished 1977 interview with Maury Silver, in SMP, box 23, folder 382.

16.
    Kirsten Fermaglich noted Milgram’s left-leaning political views in
American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares
, 92. Annette McGaha and James H. Korn noted the increased scrutiny of the treatment of subjects in “The Emergence of Interest in the Ethics of Psychological Research with Humans,”
Ethics and Behavior
5, no. 2 (1995): 157.

17.
    See James H. Korn,
Illusions of Reality: A History of Deception in Social Psychology
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 108; and Blass,
Man Who Shocked the World
, 124.

18.
    McGaha and Korn, “Emergence of Interest,” 147.

19.
    See 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), 179; and Kenneth Ring, “Experimental Social Psychology: Some Sober Questions About Some Frivolous Values,”
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
3 (1967): 117.

20.
    Shelley Patnoe,
A Narrative History of Experimental Social Psychology: The Lewin Tradition
(New York: Springer, 1998), 270–71.

21.
    Philip Zimbardo, “Experimental Social Psychology: Behaviorism with Minds and Matters,” in
Reflections on 100 Years of Experimental Social Psychology
, ed. Aroldo Rodrigues and Robert Levine (New York: Basic, 1999), 137–38.

22.
    SMP, box 23, folder 382.

23.
    Kirsten Fermaglich noted the contrast between reactions in the popular and academic press in
American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares
, 108.

24.
    Studies described in Blass,
Man Who Shocked the World
, 140, 145.

25.
    Milgram in an unpublished 1977 interview with Maury Silver. Committee’s views in Blass,
Man Who Shocked the World
, 153.

26.
    Milgram’s job offer and likely feelings in Blass,
Man Who Shocked the World
, 152–59.

27.
    Arthur G. Miller,
The Obedience Experiments: A Case Study of Controversy in Social Science
(New York: Praeger, 1986), 143.

28.
    Arness played Matt Dillon, the brave, tough-talking marshal of Dodge City, Kansas, a Wild West town where lawlessness was rife.

29.
    Carol Tavris, “A Sketch of Stanley Milgram: A Man of 1,000 Ideas,”
Psychology Today
8 (1974): 74.

10. MILGRAM’S BOOK

1.
     Hank Stam is also the editor of
Theory and Psychology
, a journal whose focus is the history and context of psychology.

2.
     Interestingly, in an unpublished musing Milgram too queried the use of the term “obedience,” toying with the idea of calling it “cooperation”: “Perhaps it is just as limiting and erroneous to say an obedient and a defiant subject as it is to say a cooperative and uncooperative subject. Cooperative and uncooperative about what? one must ask. Obedient and defiant with regard to whom?” He concluded that the labels didn’t explain motives. In SMP, box 46, folder 165.

3.
     Judith Waters’s anecdote in her essay, “Professor Stanley Milgram—Supervisor, Mentor, Friend,” published in
Obedience to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm
, ed. Thomas Blass (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000), 30; and letter to Mann in SMP, box 1a, folder 10.

4.
     Stanley Milgram,
Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View
(London: Tavistock, 1974), 5.

5.
     Ibid., 2.

6.
     Ibid., 123–24.

7.
     Thomas Blass,
The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram
(New York: Basic, 2004), 216.

8.
     Ibid., 199.

9.
     Sketches and notes on taglines and blurbs in SMP, box 63, folder 148.

10.
    SMP, box 70, folder 290. Blass also noted Milgram’s use of drugs in
Man Who Shocked the World
, 213.

11.
    SMP, box 70, folder 289.

12.
    SMP, box 61, folder 110.

13.
    Milgram,
Obedience to Authority
, 5.

14.
    Ibid., 31.

15.
    The quotation “a pathological fringe” in ibid., 30. The description given to the psychiatrists in the audience included this: “If at any time in the procedure, from 15 volts onward, the teacher refuses to obey the commands of the experimenter, the experiment is at an end. No physical or other coercion other than the four standardized commands are used. If the subject refuses to continue after being given these commands, the experimenter calls a halt to the experiment.” In SMP, box 45, folder 161.

16.
    Ibid., 45.

17.
    Omer Bartov pointed out that Milgram’s prejudices about class, race, and gender influenced his portraits of subjects in
Obedience to Authority
. See Bartov,
Germany’s War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 182–91.

18.
    Descriptions of Rensaleer on 50, 52 and Batta on 45, 46 of Milgram,
Obedience to Authority
.

19.
    Bartov,
Germany’s War and the Holocaust
, 182–91.

20.
    Descriptions of Rosenblum on 79–80 of Milgram,
Obedience to Authority
.

21.
    Subject 2017 in SMP, box 122.

22.
    Descriptions of Prozi on 77 of Milgram,
Obedience to Authority
.

23.
    Descriptions of Gino and exchange on 88 of ibid.

24.
    Bartov,
Germany’s War and the Holocaust
, 182–91.

25.
    SMP, box 61, folder 118.

26.
    Acknowledgments on xxii of Milgram,
Obedience to Authority
, and draft in SMP, box 70, folder 291.

27.
    SMP, box 62, folder 126.

28.
    Quotations from Milgram,
Obedience to Authority
, 194.

29.
    Milgram’s claims in ibid., 171. The Australian study found an obedience rate of 28 percent; Wesley Kilham and Leon Mann, “Level of Destructive Obedience as a Function of Transmitter and Executant Roles in the Milgram Obedience Paradigm,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
29 (1974): 696–702. The Italian report stated, “Compared to Milgram’s results, we have 85% of complete Italian obedience against 100% of American obedience in the pilot-experiment”; Leonardo Ancona and Rosetta Pareyson, “Contribution to the Study of Aggression: Dynamics of Destructive Obedience,”
Archivio di Psicologia, Neurologia e Psichiatria
29 (1968): 340–72. The German replication was reported in David Mantell and Robert Panzarella, “Obedience and Responsibility,”
British Journal of Social Psychology
15, no. 3 (1976): 239–45. Blass reported on the South African replication in “The Milgram Paradigm After 35 Years: Some Things We Now Know About the Obedience Experiments” in
Obedience to Authority
, 59.