Behind the Shock Machine (47 page)

27.
    SMP, box 46, folder 163.

28.
    Ibid.

29.
    Improvements to laboratory in ibid. and in SMP box 19, folder 2. Grueling schedule in box 46, folder 163.

30.
    Kurt Danziger,
Constructing the Subject: Historical Origins of Psychological Research
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 2.

31.
    Baumrind quoted in Arthur G. Miller,
The Obedience Experiments: A Case Study of Controversy in Social Science
(New York: Praeger, 1986), 103.

32.
    SMP, box 62, folder 126.

33.
    SMP, box 45, folder 158.

34.
    Subject numbers were allocated to each participant. They were three or four digits long, depending on the condition. The first digit(s) identified the number of the condition the subject was in, ranging from 1 to 24. The second two digits indicated which number they were. For example, Subject 623 was the twenty-third person in condition 6, Subject 801 was the first person in condition 8, and Subject 2421 was the twenty-first person in condition 24. Subject comments from SMP, box 44.

3. THE LIMITS OF DEBRIEFING

1.
     SMP, box 62, folder 126.

2.
     James Wilkinson, “They Were Only Obeying Orders,”
Radio Times
, October 24, 1974, in SMP, box 22, folder 354.

3.
     Stanley Milgram, “Behavioral Study of Obedience,”
Journal of Abnormal Psychology
67, no. 4 (1963): 374.

4.
     Stanley Milgram, “Issues in the Study of Obedience: A Reply to Baumrind,”
American Psychologist
19, no. 11 (1964): 849.

5.
     SMP, box 46, folder 163.

6.
     SMP, box 46, folder 165.

7.
     If you are interested in reading Alan’s article, see Alan Elms, “Twelve Ways to Say ‘Lonesome’: Assessing Error and Control in the Music of Elvis Presley,” in
The Handbook of Psychobiography
, ed. William Schultz (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 142–57.

8.
     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), 194.

9.
     SMP, box 45, folder 160.

10.
    SMP, box 46, folder 163.

11.
    SMP, box 45, folder 160.

12.
    On the second page of the report, the following sentence is bolded and underlined: “The other man did not receive any shocks.” SMP, box 45, folder 159.

13.
    Questionnaires for subjects 629, 805, 716, 1817, 711, 216, 829, and 623 in SMP, box 44.

14.
    Subject 501’s wife’s comments and exchange between Milgram and Subject 501, in long interviews, March 21, 1963, 24, 50, 55, in SMP, box 45, folder 162. The March 21 interview included Dr. Paul Errera, Subject 501, his wife, and Subject 612. Both subjects had been in the “heart attack” condition and gone to 450 volts.

15.
    Tapes 301, 331, and 332, SMP, box 155.

16.
    Alan also described Milgram’s debriefing process in his article “Keeping Deception Honest,” in
Ethical Issues in Social Science Research
, ed. Tom Beauchamp et al. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 232–45. Alan described the debriefing: “He told volunteers as soon as their participation was over that the victim hadn’t gotten nearly as much shock as they’d thought. Then Milgram waited for several months, until the bulk of the studies was completed, to notify participants fully of the experiment’s purpose, the extent of the deceptions, and the early results, as well as emphasizing the value of their participation. Volunteers who participated after the experimental series was further along were told immediately afterwards exactly what was going on.”

17.
    Milgram said, “I watched many of the experiments—perhaps a third of them—but about two thirds I did not see.” Long interviews, March 21, 1963, 59, in SMP box 45, folder 162.

18.
    SMP, box 1a, folder 3.

19.
    In a November 1961 letter to a former subject who had confessed his suspicions, Milgram wrote, “You are one of the very few people to know about the true purpose of the ‘Memory and Learning Project.’ We will be conducting experiments through the academic year 1961–2, and I would appreciate your maintaining secrecy until the experiments are over.” Letter held in SMP, box 46, folder 169.

20.
    SMP, box 44.

21.
    Tape 2316, SMP, box 153.

22.
    Tape 2340, SMP, box 153.

23.
    SMP, box 70, folder 283.

24.
    SMP, box 46, folder 173.

25.
    SMP, box 45, folder 159.

26.
    SMP, box 46, folder 163.

4. SUBJECTS AS OBJECTS

1.
     Hannah Bergman is a pseudonym.

2.
     Irwin Silverman,
The Human Subject in the Psychological Laboratory
(New York: Pergamon Press, 1977), 8–9.

3.
     Thomas Blass wrote that Milgram took a colleague’s criticism to heart: “After hearing Milgram describe his pilot studies and its findings, the colleague dismissed it as having no relevance to the ordinary man in the street. Yale students, he asserted, were so aggressive and competitive that they would step on each other’s necks with little provocation.” Blass,
The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram
(New York: Basic, 2004), 70.

4.
     Ian Nicholson noted this in “Shocking Masculinity: Stanley Milgram,
Obedience to Authority
and the ‘Crisis of Manhood’ in Cold War America,”
Isis
102, no. 2 (2011): 243.

5.
     SMP, box 43, folder 128.

6.
     Jerome Karabel detailed the Yale admissions process in
The Chosen: The Hidden History of Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton
(New York: Mariner Books, 2006), 327. Ron Rosenbaum’s article “The Great Ivy League Nude Posture Photo Scandal,”
New York Times
, January 15, 1995, reported the discovery of a cache of photographs of naked Yale freshmen.

7.
     Although Kirsten Fermaglich (
American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares: Early Holocaust Consciousness and Liberal America, 1957–65
[Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2006]) found no evidence of Milgram suffering in his formative years as a result of anti-Semitism, prejudice against Jews was an open secret in academic psychology between the 1920s and the 1950s. Andrew Winston recounted how prominent American psychologist E.G. Boring wrote hundreds of letters of reference for Jewish students and colleagues, and frequently referred to their Jewishness in his appraisal of their suitability for the position. See Andrew S. Winston, “The Defects of His Race: E.G. Boring and Anti-Semitism in American Psychology,”
History of Psychology
1, no. 1 (1998): 27–51. In addition, twenty years earlier leading psychologist Harry Harlow, born Harry Israel, was urged by his mentor Lewis Terman to change his surname in order to get a job in academia. See Deborah Blum,
Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection
(New York: Basic, 2002), 29.

8.
     The first record of female graduates is in
Yale Statistics and Timelines
,
www.yale.edu/oir/book_numbers_updated
. Information about the Yale School of Nursing at “
Lux et Veritas
: History and Contributions of the Yale University School of Nursing,”
www.med.yale.edu/library/nursing/historical
. The first woman to receive tenure was Bessie Lee Gambrill, who was tenured in the education department. Information about women and libraries at “Women at Yale,”
www.yale.edu/womenatyale/LinoniaBrothers.html
.

9.
     Comments from subject questionnaires and interviews reveal that subjects up to and including condition 18 and 19 had not been informed of the experiment’s real purpose. For example, one man in condition 18 told Errera, “The actor came out and put on his coat and mentioned that ‘I told you I had a bum heart and been in the Veterans Hospital’—he said he just wanted to leave and he did, put on his coat and he left. . . . I thought a lot about it and I wish that I could have gotten some indication that it was a hoax.” Long interviews, April 18, 1963, 24, in SMP, box 155a, folder 162. In an interview with four women, Errera asked how they felt when they got the letter explaining the experiment. The women told him that they were told the same day, right after the experiment. Errera responded, “Apparently they changed their technique. I thought you didn’t know for several weeks.” Long interviews, April 25, 1963, 35, in SMP, box 155a, folder 162.

10.
    See Williams’s comments to Subject 2001.

11.
    Philip Zimbardo noted that “when I asked about his research, Stanley chose not to share his ideas or emerging data with me (or anyone else, I gather). He said that he preferred to wait until his work was published.” Quoted in Philip Zimbardo et al., “Reflections on the Stanford Prison Experiment: Genesis, Transformations, Consequences,” in
Obedience to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm
, ed. Thomas Blass (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000), 195.

12.
    Solomon Asch,
Social Psychology
(New York: Prentice-Hall, 1952), 454.

13.
    SMP, box 122.

14.
    Ibid.

15.
    Ibid.

16.
    Long interviews, February 28, 1963, 34, in SMP, box 155a.

17.
    Long interviews, March 14, 1963, 16, in SMP, box 155a.

18.
    Long interviews, April 4, 1963, 14, in SMP, box 155a.

19.
    Long interviews, February 28, 1963, 4.

20.
    Long interviews, April 4, 1963, 16, 17.

21.
    Subject 2020, SMP, box 122.

22.
    Subject 2030, SMP, box 44.

23.
    Kirsten Fermaglich noted Milgram’s reluctance to discuss his Jewish background in
American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares
, 97. Milgram’s quotation in SMP, box 70, folder 291.

24.
    SMP, box 46, folder 165.

25.
    Subject comments in SMP, box 44.

26.
    Long interviews, April 11, 1962, 31, in SMP, box 155a.

27.
    The alderman (Subject 919)’s letter is dated December 19, 1961. SMP, box 46, folder 169. He recounted the effects at Yale and on the Holocaust survivor in the long interviews, April 11, 1962, 10.

28.
    Milgram’s notes on the phone call with the alderman in SMP, box 46, folder 169.

29.
    Long interviews, April 11, 1962, 14, 27.

30.
    Subjects 2032, 2034, and 2302 in SMP, box 44.

31.
    Long interviews, February 28, 1963, 19.

32.
    Long interviews, April 4, 1963, 40.

33.
    Stanley Milgram,
Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View
(London: Tavistock, 1974), 63.

34.
    Subjects 2005 and 2302 in SMP, box 44.

35.
    Subject 2020, SMP, box 122.

36.
    I couldn’t compare condition 20 to any other conditions except 3 because the only sanitized recordings available at the time of my research were conditions 3, 20, 23, and 24.

37.
    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, 182.