“Unplugging the Milgram machine” is a special issue of Theory and Psychology featuring papers from the Bracebridge conference.
The October 2015 issue of Theory & Psychology is devoted to Stanley Milgram and his contribution to the study of obedience. It presents a decidedly critical evaluation of these well-known experiments that challenges their relevance to our understanding of events such as the Holocaust. It builds on recent investigations of the Milgram archive at Yale. The discipline’s adulation of the obedience research overlooks several critical factors: the palpable trauma experienced by many participants, and the stark skepticism experienced by many others, Milgram’s misrepresentation of the way in which the prods were undertaken to ensure standardization, and his failure to de-brief the vast majority of participants. There is also the cherry-picking of findings. The project was whitewashed in the film, Obedience, prepared by Milgram to popularize his conclusions. The articles contributed for this issue offer a more realistic assessment of Milgram’s contribution to knowledge.
Articles
Introduction to the special issue: Unplugging the Milgram machine
Augustine Brannigan, Ian Nicholson and Frances Cherry
Coverage of recent criticisms of Milgram’s obedience experiments in introductory social psychology textbooks
Richard A. Griggs and George I. Whitehead III
Milgram’s shock experiments and the Nazi perpetrators: A contrarian perspective on the role of obedience pressures during the Holocaust
Allan Fenigstein
Designing obedience in the lab: Milgram’s shock simulator and human factors engineering
Maya Oppenheimer
Seeing is believing: The role of the film Obedience in shaping perceptions of Milgram’s Obedience to Authority
experiments
Gina Perry
The normalization of torment: Producing and managing anguish in Milgram’s “Obedience” laboratory
Ian Nicholson
Obedience in perspective: Psychology and the Holocaust
George R. Mastroianni
Acting otherwise: Resistance, agency, and subjectivities in Milgram’s studies of obedience
Ethan Hoffman, N. Reed Myerberg and Jill G. Morawski
Essay Review
When subjects become objects: The lies behind the Milgram legend
Diana Baumrind
Review
Understanding the unthinkable
Augustine Brannigan, Beyond the Banality of Evil: Criminology and Genocide
Reviewed by Matthew P. Unger