Milgram at 50 Exploring the Enduring Relevance of Psychology's most Famous Studies

by Haslam, S. Alexander; Miller, Arthur G.; Reicher, Stephen; Bettencourt, Ann

• ISBN13: 9781119029021
• ISBN10: 1119029023
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2014-09-29
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

To mark the 50th anniversary of Milgram's first major publication—"Behavioral study of obedience" (1963)—this issue contains fourteen papers from eading Milgram scholars examining the contemporary relevance of the famous Yale studies. The issue offers a critical appraisal of the impact of Milgram's work, as well as its moral dangers and analytic weaknesses. Several important new perspectives obtained from archival analysis and innovative methodologies are also presented. The relevance of Milgram's experiments for an understanding of the Holocaust is given particular emphasis. The issue presents a range of fresh material that provides the basis for a significant updating of our appreciation of Milgram's legacy, and that will inform forthcoming scholarship and debate.

Author Biography

S. Alexander Haslam is Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology and Australian Laureate Fellow at the University of Queensland. He is a former Chief Editor of the European Journal of Social Psychology (2002-2005) and his work focuses on the study of group and identity processes in social and organizational contexts. With colleagues he has written and edited 11 books, the most recent being The New Psychology of Leadership: Identity, Influence and Power (with Steve Reicher & Michael Platow, Psychology Press, 2011) and Social Psychology: Revisiting the Classic Studies (edited with Joanne Smith, Sage, 2012).

Arthur G. Miller is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He received his doctorate in social psychology from Indiana University in 1967, and spent 1979-1980 at Princeton University on anNIMH fellowship, studying with Ned Jones. He is the author of The Obedience Experiments: A Case Study of Controversy in Social Science (Praeger, 1986). He edited a special issue of Personality and Social Psychology Review ("Harming other people: Perspectives on evil and violence," 1999, 3), and The Social Psychology of Good and Evil (Guilford, 2004). The second edition of the latter is in progress.?He was one of the commentators on Burger's modification of the obedience paradigm, featured in a special issue of the American Psychologist (January, 2009), and a commentator on Diana Baumrind's reprise of her classic ethical critique of Milgram's first obedience article in Theoretical and Applied Ethics (2014).

Stephen Reicher is Professor of Psychology at the University of St. Andrews. A former editor of the British Journal of Social Psychology, his work centres of the relationship between social identity and collective behaviour. In over 200 publications he has addressed such topics as crowd psychology, intergroup hostility, nationalism and national identity, political rhetoric, leadership and the psychology of tyranny and resistance. His latest two books are The New Psychology of Leadership: Identity, Influence and Power (with Alex Haslam and Michael Platow, Psychology Press, 2011) and Mad Mobs and Englishmen? Myths and Realities of the 2011 Riots (with Clifford Stott, Constable, 2011).

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION 

What Makes a Person a Perpetrator? The Intellectual, Moral, and  Methodological Arguments for Revisiting Milgram’s Research on the Influence of Authority  393
Stephen D. Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Arthur G. Miller 
 
SECTION I: THE GAPS IN MILGRAM’S ANALYSIS: NEW INSIGHTS FROM THE MILGRAM ARCHIVES

The Emergence of Milgram’s Bureaucratic Machine  409
Nestar Russell 

Discourse, Defiance, and Rationality: “Knowledge Work” in the “Obedience” Experiments  424
Stephen Gibson 

Revisioning Obedience: Exploring the Role of Milgram’s Skills as a Filmmaker in Bringing His Shocking Narrative to Life  439
Kathryn Millard 
 
SECTION II: THE RICHNESS OF MILGRAM’S FINDINGS: INSIGHTS FROM EMPIRICAL AND CONCEPTUAL EXTENSIONS

Milgram’s Unpublished Obedience Variation and its Historical Relevance  454
Francois Rochat and Thomas Blass 

Nothing by Mere Authority: Evidence that in an Experimental Analogue of the Milgram Paradigm Participants are Motivated not by Orders but by Appeals to Science  471
S. Alexander Haslam, Stephen D. Reicher, and Megan E. Birney 

Beyond Obedience: Situational Features in Milgram’s Experiment That Kept His Participants
Shocking  487
Jerry M. Burger 
 
SECTION III: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MILGRAM’S EXPERIMENTS: OBEDIENCE, DESTRUCTIVENESS, AND RESISTANCE

Obeying, Joining, Following, Resisting, and Other Processes in the Milgram Studies, and in the Holocaust and Other Genocides: Situations, Personality, and Bystanders  499
Ervin Staub 

“Ordinary Men,” Extraordinary Circumstances: Historians, Social Psychology, and the Holocaust  513
Richard Overy 

Authorities and Uncertainties: Applying Lessons from the Study of Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust to the Milgram Legacy  529
Rachel L. Einwohner 
 
SECTION IV: THE MEANING OF MILGRAM’S EXPERIMENTS: CAUSALITY, RESPONSIBILITY, AND CONTEXT

Observing Obedience: How Sophisticated are Social Perceivers?  542
Andrew E. Monroe and Glenn D. Reeder 

The Explanatory Value of Milgram’s Obedience Experiments: A Contemporary Appraisal  556
Arthur G. Miller 

Obedience, Self-Control, and the Voice of Culture  572
Michael R. Ent and Roy F. Baumeister 
 
SECTION V: OVERVIEW AND COMMENTARY

50:50 Hindsight: Appreciating Anew the contributions of Milgram’s Obedience Experiments  585
Jolanda Jetten and Frank Mols