Avec l'ouverture des archives personnelles de Milgram, à partir du milieu des années 1990, une « ... more Avec l'ouverture des archives personnelles de Milgram, à partir du milieu des années 1990, une « seconde vague » de littérature sur les Études sur l'Obéissance s'est développée. Une partie de cette littérature suggère de manière convaincante que les expérimentations de Milgram sont si problématiques sur le plan éthique et méthodologique qu'elles ne mériteraient pas l'énorme attention qu'elles ont reçue et continuent de recevoir. À l'autre extrémité du spectre, certains chercheurs soutiennent qu'il y a encore beaucoup à apprendre de ces expériences. Confronté à des opinions aussi divergentes, voire même contradictoires, qui doit-on croire ? Après avoir examiné cette littérature, cet article aborde deux questions : les expérimentations sur l'obéissance sontelles éthiquement contestables ? Et restent-elles méthodologiquement valides ? Cet article conclut que bien que les expérimentations sur l'obéissance soient, pour de nombreuses raisons, contraires à l'éthique, elles restent néanmoins méthodologiquement valides. L'article conclut également que c'est précisément en raison du caractère éthiquement scabreux de ces expérimentations qu'elles restent si pertinentes pour comprendre le monde réel, bien au-delà des murs des laboratoires.
En 1960, Stanley Milgram s'est demandé si des personnes ordinaires obéiraient à des ordres leur p... more En 1960, Stanley Milgram s'est demandé si des personnes ordinaires obéiraient à des ordres leur prescrivant de nuire à des innocents, ainsi que de nombreux Allemands l'avaient fait pendant la Shoah. Pour répondre à cette question, il conçut une expérimentation à l'issue de laquelle, à la demande d'une autorité scientifique, 65 % des sujets ont infligé ce qui semblait être des chocs potentiellement létaux à une autre personne atteinte d'une pathologie cardiaque légère. À ce jour, aucune explication de cette découverte ne fait consensus. Trois théories continuent toutefois d'accaparer l'essentiel de l'attention : l'hypothèse de l'incrédulité, l'hypothèse de l'état agentique et l'hypothèse du suivisme engagé. L'objectif de cet article est de présenter un aperçu de la manière dont Milgram a conçu sa procédure de base, puis d'utiliser cette connaissance de la préhistoire de sa découverte comme base pour examiner de manière critique ces trois explications. À la suite de cette revue critique, une théorie moins connue sera présentée, laquelle est corroborée par les résultats originaux de Milgram.
Social psychologist Milgram (1963, 1974) and sociologist Elias ([1939] 2000) are undisputed socia... more Social psychologist Milgram (1963, 1974) and sociologist Elias ([1939] 2000) are undisputed social science heavyweights whose scholarly contributions delve into the shared topic of violence. Despite this similarity, near nothing has been written on any insights one might offer the other. With the aim of bucking this trend, this exploratory article illustrates how certain connections shared between both magna operas are mutually beneficial: Elias's thesis can shed new light into otherwise mysterious obedient subject behavior and Milgram's experiments can be used to bolster a central yet weak pillar in Elias's thesis. The strengthening of this weak pillar is of particular importance because it likely reinvigorates the ability of the Civilizing Process to offer unique and counterintuitive insights into German perpetrator behavior during the Holocaust. It is through these Milgram-Elias linkages that the author's paradoxical concept of civilized killers emerges.
, or even those of the heights of Heinrich Himmler spoke of a "humane" method of killing other hu... more , or even those of the heights of Heinrich Himmler spoke of a "humane" method of killing other human beings, what exactly did they mean? One outcome of this book is a tentative outline of the key characteristics-a Weberian Ideal-Type-of what the Nazis regarded as the most humane method of killing. As this chapter will argue, when these and other Nazis spoke of such matters, what they seemed to desire was a method of killing that rated highly on four main conditions. First, victims should remain totally unaware that they are about to die. Second, perpetrators need not touch, see, or hear their victims as they die. Third, the death blow should avoid leaving any visual indications of harm on the victims' bodies. And finally, the death blow should be instantaneous. At the start of the Holocaust, the Nazis did not have a cheap and efficient method of killing civilians that came remotely close to meeting all four of these conditions. Over time, however, and with much competitive trial-and-error experimentation, certain innovators in places like Auschwitz inched their way ever closer to this ideal. No ANticipAtioN of DeAth Most Nazis strongly preferred that their many civilian victims not experience the stress of knowing they were about to die. To secure such a condition, the Nazis relied most often on elaborate props of deception.
What, in terms of a brief synopsis, were Volume 1's key arguments and conclusions? At the expense... more What, in terms of a brief synopsis, were Volume 1's key arguments and conclusions? At the expense of repeating what I said at the end of Volume 1, this book set out by presenting a resilient conundrum in Holocaust studies. That is, considering that many specialist historians agree that during the Nazi era most Germans were only moderately antisemitic, 1 how during the Holocaust did they so quickly prove capable of slaughtering millions of Jews? I argued that social psychologist Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority experiments may hold key insights into answering this perplexing question. Milgram's main discovery was that 65% of ordinary people in his laboratory willingly, if hesitantly, followed an experimenter's commands to inflict seemingly intenseperhaps even lethal-electrical shocks on a "likable" person. 2 When participants were asked why they completed this experiment, much like the Nazi war criminals, they typically said they were just following higher orders. 3 There is no shortage of scholars who, like Milgram, sensed similarities between the Obedience studies and the Holocaust. 4 These parallels have so frequently been drawn that Arthur G. Miller collectively CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Volume 2-The "Twisted Road" to Auschwitz
Because participants were the last functionary link in the Obedience studies’ organizational chai... more Because participants were the last functionary link in the Obedience studies’ organizational chain, in this chapter Russell argues they were susceptible to the same kinds of pushes and pulls that affected all the other functionary links further up the chain of command. Having said this, Russell also shows that because compliant participants were led to suspect they might be electrocuting (as opposed to inflicting intense stress on) an innocent person, Stanley Milgram’s strategy to corrupting them was far more coercive, manipulative, and oppressive. To convince most participants to do what they did, Milgram had to systematically ensnare them in what he describes as a cunning psychological trap, a seductive web of obligation, which, despite great efforts on their part, most could not escape.
This article challenges the most significant methodological criticism directed at Milgram's obedi... more This article challenges the most significant methodological criticism directed at Milgram's obedience studies, namely, that they lack internal validity because most obedient subjects probably did not believe that the "learner" was actually receiving dangerous electric shocks (Orne & Holland, 1968). This criticism has been bolstered recently by data that claims to show that this was indeed the case (Perry et al., 2020; Hollander & Turowetz, 2017). We argue instead that while Milgram's experimental paradigm has minor methodological flaws, the resilient issue of believability is actually a red herring, because Milgram's procedure ensured subjects remained uncertain about the reality of the shocks they were ostensibly delivering. This uncertainty forced all subjects into resolving the experiment's inherent moral dilemma. That is, would they prematurely end a potentially real experiment and secure the learner's safety? Or would they continue to inflict "shocks" they believed were perhaps, probably, or even most certainly fake, thus still running the risk of potentially being wrong? We believe the obedience experiments remain, for the most part, internally valid, and that they continue to be externalisable to other moral dilemmas. They help in understanding the perpetration of the Holocaust, contrary to the opposite claim made by some of Milgram's critics.
In this chapter, Russell provides a brief overview of the key issues that Stanley Milgram’s acade... more In this chapter, Russell provides a brief overview of the key issues that Stanley Milgram’s academic peers debated after the publication of his Obedience to Authority research. More specifically, Russell presents and assesses the prominent ethical and methodological critiques of Milgram’s research. Then with a focus on the Holocaust, Russell explores the debate over the generalizability of Milgram’s results beyond the laboratory walls. Finally, Russell examines the scholarly reaction to Milgram’s agentic state theory, particularly with reference to its application to the Milgram-Holocaust linkage.
In this chapter Russell reveals the key influential events, experiences, and people that contribu... more In this chapter Russell reveals the key influential events, experiences, and people that contributed to Stanley Milgram’s invention of his Obedience to Authority studies. Russell shows that these influences were many and varied, and the earliest of them date back to Milgram’s early childhood.
To convert his research idea into a reality, Stanley Milgram had to design, construct, and then m... more To convert his research idea into a reality, Stanley Milgram had to design, construct, and then manage an organizational process capable of systematically and efficiently extracting data from nearly a thousand participants. In this first of three theoretical chapters that attempt to explain the Obedience studies, Russell shows that Milgram’s organizational system—a goal-orientated, bureaucratic process that unobtrusively lay hidden behind the participants’ actions—actually played a necessary structural role in the production of the baseline experiment’s high completion rate. This chapter essentially offers a more sociological account of the Obedience studies.
In this chapter, Russell draws attention to the central role of the shock generator—the single mo... more In this chapter, Russell draws attention to the central role of the shock generator—the single most powerful strain resolving element in the entire experimental paradigm. He argues that when the shock generator is paid the slightest attention, the insights offered are revelatory. For example, Russell demonstrates that even the controversy over the many attempts by authors to generalize Milgram’s findings beyond his laboratory walls almost disappears when the shock generator is given the undivided attention he believes it deserves. Thus, Russell argues that the shock generator’s key role in the Obedience studies provides the strongest foundation yet from which to generalize Milgram’s findings to the outside world.
After Stanley Milgram achieved his first research goal of discovering how to get most ordinary pe... more After Stanley Milgram achieved his first research goal of discovering how to get most ordinary people to inflict harm on a likable person (Chapter 4), he moved on to his second goal: to undertake many slight baseline variations in an attempt to explain why 65% of participants completed the Remote (baseline) experiment. In this chapter, Russell presents Milgram’s discoveries during this less predictable stage of the wider research project. Russell also draws connections between the Obedience studies and Max Weber’s theory of formal rationality in order to explain Milgram’s impressive organizational feat in collecting what ended up being an enormous amount of data. The final section of this chapter presents the theory Milgram developed from his many baseline variations and how he applied it to better understanding perpetrator behavior during the Holocaust.
Two leading Holocaust historians, Yehuda Bauer and Christopher Browning, have in recent years ind... more Two leading Holocaust historians, Yehuda Bauer and Christopher Browning, have in recent years independently asked how so many ordinary Germans (most of whom in the 1930s had been moderately anti-Semitic) could become by the early 1940s willing murderers of Jews. Social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, had years before been interested in finding answers to similar questions, and to that end in the early 1960s carried out his widely debated "Obedience to Authority" (OTA) experiments at Yale University. Drawing on previously unpublished material from Milgram's personal archive at Yale, this thesis investigates how Milgram developed his research idea to the point where, by the time he ran his first official experiment, he was able to convert the majority of his ordinary subjects into torturers of other people. It is argued that Milgram's experiments were in themselves structured as a bureaucratic microcosm, and say less about obedience to authority, per se, than about th...
For several decades now the gun control literature in the United States has continued to produce ... more For several decades now the gun control literature in the United States has continued to produce conflicting accounts in regards to the availability of firearms on the U.S's high rate of homicide. This thesis proposes that this conflict is, in part, due to the implicit and continued influence of Wolfgang's (1958) 'weapon substitution hypothesis'. Wolfgang's hypothesis proposes that the intentions of an assailant, whether they be to kill or injure, determined the weapon selected. Since guns are recognised as being highly lethal, all assailants who use such weapons were believed by Wolfgang to have been highly determined to kill. Among other negative effects, it is argued that Wolfgang's hypothesis introduced a mind-set to this controversial research area that has continued to influence the opinions of academics from both sides of the debate. This mind-set revolves around the consensually held belief that if a firearm assailant is believed to have been determin...
After Stanley Milgram published his first official Obedience to Authority baseline experiment, so... more After Stanley Milgram published his first official Obedience to Authority baseline experiment, some scholars drew parallels between his findings and the Holocaust. These comparisons are now termed the Milgram-Holocaust linkage. However, because the Obedience studies have been shown to differ in many ways from the Holocaust’s finer historical details, more recent literature has challenged the linkage. In this article I argue that the Obedience studies and the Holocaust share two commonalities that are so significant that they may negate the importance others have attributed to the differences. These commonalities are (1) an end-goal of maximising “ordinary” people’s participation in harm infliction and (2) a reliance on Weberian formal rational techniques of discovery to achieve this end-goal. Using documents obtained from Milgram’s personal archive at Yale University, this article reveals the means-to-end learning processes Milgram utilised during his pilot studies in order to maxim...
Understanding Willing Participants, Volume 2, Dec 28, 2018
This chapter explores the top-down forces utilized by the SS leadership to encourage ordinary and... more This chapter explores the top-down forces utilized by the SS leadership to encourage ordinary and moderately antisemitic Germans to participate in the genocide of Jewish men, then women, and finally all Jews, including children and babies. It delineates the SS leadership's central role in driving the extermination of Soviet Jewry. This chapter supports the previous argument that before the campaign, the SS leadership desired, but did not directly order, the extermination of Soviet Jewry. More specifically, because ordinary Germans had participated in the killings of fairly large numbers of "Untermenschen" over the previous few years, the SS leadership suspected before Operation Barbarossa that their men might willingly exterminate every Soviet Jew encountered. They could not, however, be certain, and consequently, they felt it unwise to set out by issuing direct orders. Instead, during the invasion Himmler and Heydrich planned to do all they could to socially engineer their desirethe so-called Führer's wish-into reality. I would argue that the SS leadership's rational intention to convert Hitler's desires into reality shares some similarity with the initially uncertain Milgram where, while inventing his baseline procedure, he did all he could to maximize his participants' participation in harm doing. But if, from the start of the Soviet campaign, there were no direct official orders to kill all Jews, then the "staggering…speed with which the wave of mass murder gathered pace" remains a mystery. 1 The next two chapters aim to shed some new light on this mystery. This depressing chapter in history begins with the so-called Holocaust by bullets. CHAPTER 4 Operation Barbarossa and the Holocaust by Bullets-Top-Down Forces
Understanding Willing Participants, Volume 2, Dec 28, 2018
At face value, Operation Reinhard and the Auschwitz concentration camp system appear somewhat sim... more At face value, Operation Reinhard and the Auschwitz concentration camp system appear somewhat similar, the main common denominator being the goal of killing massive numbers of human beings. Having said that, a closer look reveals each was governed by different, discrete policy objectives: Operation Reinhard's policy was to kill all the "useless mouths" in the Polish ghettos while Auschwitz focused on extermination through work. Even so, as this chapter will show, Auschwitz moved toward its objective using the same mechanism as Operation Reinhard and, later, Milgram did-the application of intuition, past experience, and close observation of the pilot-testing process (all of which advanced efficiency, predictability, calculability, and control, along with a greater dependence on non-human technologies). With a more pronounced emphasis on industrialization, Auschwitz achieved its most significant "advancement"-the one that distinguished it most from other solutions to the "Jewish problem"-in the matter of the most powerful strain resolving mechanism of all-the means of inflicting harm. Killing on an industrial scale distinguished Auschwitz in three main ways: efficiency, profitability, and (from the Nazi perspective) "humaneness." The Nazis, it seems, regarded the Auschwitz process as the most humane solution to the "Jewish problem" in two main ways. First, for the most directly involved perpetrators, Auschwitz was a relatively stressfree, and with the camp's high standard of living, pleasant place to work. Second, Auschwitz developed a standard operating procedure that the Nazis in and beyond the camp-including the German public cognizant CHAPTER 7
Understanding Willing Participants, Volume 2, Dec 28, 2018
, the Wehrmacht invaded Poland, an act that initiated French and British declarations of war, and... more , the Wehrmacht invaded Poland, an act that initiated French and British declarations of war, and thus signaled the start of World War Two. With their massive numbers, superior weaponry, and Blitzkrieg tactics, the Wehrmacht quickly swept Polish defenders aside. Then, on 17 September, the Soviets attacked Poland from the east. As anticipated, the Polish civilian population fiercely resisted the Germans, typically in the form of sniper attacks. The Wehrmacht's usual wartime policy in dealing with civilian resistance was twofold. First, captured resisters were tried in a military court and if found guilty, executed. Second, if resisters evaded capture, community leaders were taken hostage and their lives threatened if the partisan activity continued. 1 However, on 3 September Himmler provided the German armed forces with a third and much swifter option: a shoot-to-kill authorization that allowed for the circumvention of a military trial. 2 Some members of the German armed forces interpreted the authorization as a right to kill whomever and whenever they wanted; indeed, this is what it was. Armed with such powers, sectors of the Einsatzgruppen occasionally engaged in mob-like violence, acts which greatly concerned the Wehrmacht Commander-in-Chief Walther von Brauchitsch. 3 Brauchitsch was so angry that on 21 September Himmler had to send Heydrich to personally smooth matters over with the powerful chief commander. Brauchitsch demanded one thing, the removal of Himmler's shoot-tokill order. In fear of having pushed influential figures in the Wehrmacht too far too soon, a few days later Himmler granted Brauchitsch's CHAPTER 3 World War Two and Nazi Forays into the Killing of Civilians
Avec l'ouverture des archives personnelles de Milgram, à partir du milieu des années 1990, une « ... more Avec l'ouverture des archives personnelles de Milgram, à partir du milieu des années 1990, une « seconde vague » de littérature sur les Études sur l'Obéissance s'est développée. Une partie de cette littérature suggère de manière convaincante que les expérimentations de Milgram sont si problématiques sur le plan éthique et méthodologique qu'elles ne mériteraient pas l'énorme attention qu'elles ont reçue et continuent de recevoir. À l'autre extrémité du spectre, certains chercheurs soutiennent qu'il y a encore beaucoup à apprendre de ces expériences. Confronté à des opinions aussi divergentes, voire même contradictoires, qui doit-on croire ? Après avoir examiné cette littérature, cet article aborde deux questions : les expérimentations sur l'obéissance sontelles éthiquement contestables ? Et restent-elles méthodologiquement valides ? Cet article conclut que bien que les expérimentations sur l'obéissance soient, pour de nombreuses raisons, contraires à l'éthique, elles restent néanmoins méthodologiquement valides. L'article conclut également que c'est précisément en raison du caractère éthiquement scabreux de ces expérimentations qu'elles restent si pertinentes pour comprendre le monde réel, bien au-delà des murs des laboratoires.
En 1960, Stanley Milgram s'est demandé si des personnes ordinaires obéiraient à des ordres leur p... more En 1960, Stanley Milgram s'est demandé si des personnes ordinaires obéiraient à des ordres leur prescrivant de nuire à des innocents, ainsi que de nombreux Allemands l'avaient fait pendant la Shoah. Pour répondre à cette question, il conçut une expérimentation à l'issue de laquelle, à la demande d'une autorité scientifique, 65 % des sujets ont infligé ce qui semblait être des chocs potentiellement létaux à une autre personne atteinte d'une pathologie cardiaque légère. À ce jour, aucune explication de cette découverte ne fait consensus. Trois théories continuent toutefois d'accaparer l'essentiel de l'attention : l'hypothèse de l'incrédulité, l'hypothèse de l'état agentique et l'hypothèse du suivisme engagé. L'objectif de cet article est de présenter un aperçu de la manière dont Milgram a conçu sa procédure de base, puis d'utiliser cette connaissance de la préhistoire de sa découverte comme base pour examiner de manière critique ces trois explications. À la suite de cette revue critique, une théorie moins connue sera présentée, laquelle est corroborée par les résultats originaux de Milgram.
Social psychologist Milgram (1963, 1974) and sociologist Elias ([1939] 2000) are undisputed socia... more Social psychologist Milgram (1963, 1974) and sociologist Elias ([1939] 2000) are undisputed social science heavyweights whose scholarly contributions delve into the shared topic of violence. Despite this similarity, near nothing has been written on any insights one might offer the other. With the aim of bucking this trend, this exploratory article illustrates how certain connections shared between both magna operas are mutually beneficial: Elias's thesis can shed new light into otherwise mysterious obedient subject behavior and Milgram's experiments can be used to bolster a central yet weak pillar in Elias's thesis. The strengthening of this weak pillar is of particular importance because it likely reinvigorates the ability of the Civilizing Process to offer unique and counterintuitive insights into German perpetrator behavior during the Holocaust. It is through these Milgram-Elias linkages that the author's paradoxical concept of civilized killers emerges.
, or even those of the heights of Heinrich Himmler spoke of a "humane" method of killing other hu... more , or even those of the heights of Heinrich Himmler spoke of a "humane" method of killing other human beings, what exactly did they mean? One outcome of this book is a tentative outline of the key characteristics-a Weberian Ideal-Type-of what the Nazis regarded as the most humane method of killing. As this chapter will argue, when these and other Nazis spoke of such matters, what they seemed to desire was a method of killing that rated highly on four main conditions. First, victims should remain totally unaware that they are about to die. Second, perpetrators need not touch, see, or hear their victims as they die. Third, the death blow should avoid leaving any visual indications of harm on the victims' bodies. And finally, the death blow should be instantaneous. At the start of the Holocaust, the Nazis did not have a cheap and efficient method of killing civilians that came remotely close to meeting all four of these conditions. Over time, however, and with much competitive trial-and-error experimentation, certain innovators in places like Auschwitz inched their way ever closer to this ideal. No ANticipAtioN of DeAth Most Nazis strongly preferred that their many civilian victims not experience the stress of knowing they were about to die. To secure such a condition, the Nazis relied most often on elaborate props of deception.
What, in terms of a brief synopsis, were Volume 1's key arguments and conclusions? At the expense... more What, in terms of a brief synopsis, were Volume 1's key arguments and conclusions? At the expense of repeating what I said at the end of Volume 1, this book set out by presenting a resilient conundrum in Holocaust studies. That is, considering that many specialist historians agree that during the Nazi era most Germans were only moderately antisemitic, 1 how during the Holocaust did they so quickly prove capable of slaughtering millions of Jews? I argued that social psychologist Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority experiments may hold key insights into answering this perplexing question. Milgram's main discovery was that 65% of ordinary people in his laboratory willingly, if hesitantly, followed an experimenter's commands to inflict seemingly intenseperhaps even lethal-electrical shocks on a "likable" person. 2 When participants were asked why they completed this experiment, much like the Nazi war criminals, they typically said they were just following higher orders. 3 There is no shortage of scholars who, like Milgram, sensed similarities between the Obedience studies and the Holocaust. 4 These parallels have so frequently been drawn that Arthur G. Miller collectively CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Volume 2-The "Twisted Road" to Auschwitz
Because participants were the last functionary link in the Obedience studies’ organizational chai... more Because participants were the last functionary link in the Obedience studies’ organizational chain, in this chapter Russell argues they were susceptible to the same kinds of pushes and pulls that affected all the other functionary links further up the chain of command. Having said this, Russell also shows that because compliant participants were led to suspect they might be electrocuting (as opposed to inflicting intense stress on) an innocent person, Stanley Milgram’s strategy to corrupting them was far more coercive, manipulative, and oppressive. To convince most participants to do what they did, Milgram had to systematically ensnare them in what he describes as a cunning psychological trap, a seductive web of obligation, which, despite great efforts on their part, most could not escape.
This article challenges the most significant methodological criticism directed at Milgram's obedi... more This article challenges the most significant methodological criticism directed at Milgram's obedience studies, namely, that they lack internal validity because most obedient subjects probably did not believe that the "learner" was actually receiving dangerous electric shocks (Orne & Holland, 1968). This criticism has been bolstered recently by data that claims to show that this was indeed the case (Perry et al., 2020; Hollander & Turowetz, 2017). We argue instead that while Milgram's experimental paradigm has minor methodological flaws, the resilient issue of believability is actually a red herring, because Milgram's procedure ensured subjects remained uncertain about the reality of the shocks they were ostensibly delivering. This uncertainty forced all subjects into resolving the experiment's inherent moral dilemma. That is, would they prematurely end a potentially real experiment and secure the learner's safety? Or would they continue to inflict "shocks" they believed were perhaps, probably, or even most certainly fake, thus still running the risk of potentially being wrong? We believe the obedience experiments remain, for the most part, internally valid, and that they continue to be externalisable to other moral dilemmas. They help in understanding the perpetration of the Holocaust, contrary to the opposite claim made by some of Milgram's critics.
In this chapter, Russell provides a brief overview of the key issues that Stanley Milgram’s acade... more In this chapter, Russell provides a brief overview of the key issues that Stanley Milgram’s academic peers debated after the publication of his Obedience to Authority research. More specifically, Russell presents and assesses the prominent ethical and methodological critiques of Milgram’s research. Then with a focus on the Holocaust, Russell explores the debate over the generalizability of Milgram’s results beyond the laboratory walls. Finally, Russell examines the scholarly reaction to Milgram’s agentic state theory, particularly with reference to its application to the Milgram-Holocaust linkage.
In this chapter Russell reveals the key influential events, experiences, and people that contribu... more In this chapter Russell reveals the key influential events, experiences, and people that contributed to Stanley Milgram’s invention of his Obedience to Authority studies. Russell shows that these influences were many and varied, and the earliest of them date back to Milgram’s early childhood.
To convert his research idea into a reality, Stanley Milgram had to design, construct, and then m... more To convert his research idea into a reality, Stanley Milgram had to design, construct, and then manage an organizational process capable of systematically and efficiently extracting data from nearly a thousand participants. In this first of three theoretical chapters that attempt to explain the Obedience studies, Russell shows that Milgram’s organizational system—a goal-orientated, bureaucratic process that unobtrusively lay hidden behind the participants’ actions—actually played a necessary structural role in the production of the baseline experiment’s high completion rate. This chapter essentially offers a more sociological account of the Obedience studies.
In this chapter, Russell draws attention to the central role of the shock generator—the single mo... more In this chapter, Russell draws attention to the central role of the shock generator—the single most powerful strain resolving element in the entire experimental paradigm. He argues that when the shock generator is paid the slightest attention, the insights offered are revelatory. For example, Russell demonstrates that even the controversy over the many attempts by authors to generalize Milgram’s findings beyond his laboratory walls almost disappears when the shock generator is given the undivided attention he believes it deserves. Thus, Russell argues that the shock generator’s key role in the Obedience studies provides the strongest foundation yet from which to generalize Milgram’s findings to the outside world.
After Stanley Milgram achieved his first research goal of discovering how to get most ordinary pe... more After Stanley Milgram achieved his first research goal of discovering how to get most ordinary people to inflict harm on a likable person (Chapter 4), he moved on to his second goal: to undertake many slight baseline variations in an attempt to explain why 65% of participants completed the Remote (baseline) experiment. In this chapter, Russell presents Milgram’s discoveries during this less predictable stage of the wider research project. Russell also draws connections between the Obedience studies and Max Weber’s theory of formal rationality in order to explain Milgram’s impressive organizational feat in collecting what ended up being an enormous amount of data. The final section of this chapter presents the theory Milgram developed from his many baseline variations and how he applied it to better understanding perpetrator behavior during the Holocaust.
Two leading Holocaust historians, Yehuda Bauer and Christopher Browning, have in recent years ind... more Two leading Holocaust historians, Yehuda Bauer and Christopher Browning, have in recent years independently asked how so many ordinary Germans (most of whom in the 1930s had been moderately anti-Semitic) could become by the early 1940s willing murderers of Jews. Social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, had years before been interested in finding answers to similar questions, and to that end in the early 1960s carried out his widely debated "Obedience to Authority" (OTA) experiments at Yale University. Drawing on previously unpublished material from Milgram's personal archive at Yale, this thesis investigates how Milgram developed his research idea to the point where, by the time he ran his first official experiment, he was able to convert the majority of his ordinary subjects into torturers of other people. It is argued that Milgram's experiments were in themselves structured as a bureaucratic microcosm, and say less about obedience to authority, per se, than about th...
For several decades now the gun control literature in the United States has continued to produce ... more For several decades now the gun control literature in the United States has continued to produce conflicting accounts in regards to the availability of firearms on the U.S's high rate of homicide. This thesis proposes that this conflict is, in part, due to the implicit and continued influence of Wolfgang's (1958) 'weapon substitution hypothesis'. Wolfgang's hypothesis proposes that the intentions of an assailant, whether they be to kill or injure, determined the weapon selected. Since guns are recognised as being highly lethal, all assailants who use such weapons were believed by Wolfgang to have been highly determined to kill. Among other negative effects, it is argued that Wolfgang's hypothesis introduced a mind-set to this controversial research area that has continued to influence the opinions of academics from both sides of the debate. This mind-set revolves around the consensually held belief that if a firearm assailant is believed to have been determin...
After Stanley Milgram published his first official Obedience to Authority baseline experiment, so... more After Stanley Milgram published his first official Obedience to Authority baseline experiment, some scholars drew parallels between his findings and the Holocaust. These comparisons are now termed the Milgram-Holocaust linkage. However, because the Obedience studies have been shown to differ in many ways from the Holocaust’s finer historical details, more recent literature has challenged the linkage. In this article I argue that the Obedience studies and the Holocaust share two commonalities that are so significant that they may negate the importance others have attributed to the differences. These commonalities are (1) an end-goal of maximising “ordinary” people’s participation in harm infliction and (2) a reliance on Weberian formal rational techniques of discovery to achieve this end-goal. Using documents obtained from Milgram’s personal archive at Yale University, this article reveals the means-to-end learning processes Milgram utilised during his pilot studies in order to maxim...
Understanding Willing Participants, Volume 2, Dec 28, 2018
This chapter explores the top-down forces utilized by the SS leadership to encourage ordinary and... more This chapter explores the top-down forces utilized by the SS leadership to encourage ordinary and moderately antisemitic Germans to participate in the genocide of Jewish men, then women, and finally all Jews, including children and babies. It delineates the SS leadership's central role in driving the extermination of Soviet Jewry. This chapter supports the previous argument that before the campaign, the SS leadership desired, but did not directly order, the extermination of Soviet Jewry. More specifically, because ordinary Germans had participated in the killings of fairly large numbers of "Untermenschen" over the previous few years, the SS leadership suspected before Operation Barbarossa that their men might willingly exterminate every Soviet Jew encountered. They could not, however, be certain, and consequently, they felt it unwise to set out by issuing direct orders. Instead, during the invasion Himmler and Heydrich planned to do all they could to socially engineer their desirethe so-called Führer's wish-into reality. I would argue that the SS leadership's rational intention to convert Hitler's desires into reality shares some similarity with the initially uncertain Milgram where, while inventing his baseline procedure, he did all he could to maximize his participants' participation in harm doing. But if, from the start of the Soviet campaign, there were no direct official orders to kill all Jews, then the "staggering…speed with which the wave of mass murder gathered pace" remains a mystery. 1 The next two chapters aim to shed some new light on this mystery. This depressing chapter in history begins with the so-called Holocaust by bullets. CHAPTER 4 Operation Barbarossa and the Holocaust by Bullets-Top-Down Forces
Understanding Willing Participants, Volume 2, Dec 28, 2018
At face value, Operation Reinhard and the Auschwitz concentration camp system appear somewhat sim... more At face value, Operation Reinhard and the Auschwitz concentration camp system appear somewhat similar, the main common denominator being the goal of killing massive numbers of human beings. Having said that, a closer look reveals each was governed by different, discrete policy objectives: Operation Reinhard's policy was to kill all the "useless mouths" in the Polish ghettos while Auschwitz focused on extermination through work. Even so, as this chapter will show, Auschwitz moved toward its objective using the same mechanism as Operation Reinhard and, later, Milgram did-the application of intuition, past experience, and close observation of the pilot-testing process (all of which advanced efficiency, predictability, calculability, and control, along with a greater dependence on non-human technologies). With a more pronounced emphasis on industrialization, Auschwitz achieved its most significant "advancement"-the one that distinguished it most from other solutions to the "Jewish problem"-in the matter of the most powerful strain resolving mechanism of all-the means of inflicting harm. Killing on an industrial scale distinguished Auschwitz in three main ways: efficiency, profitability, and (from the Nazi perspective) "humaneness." The Nazis, it seems, regarded the Auschwitz process as the most humane solution to the "Jewish problem" in two main ways. First, for the most directly involved perpetrators, Auschwitz was a relatively stressfree, and with the camp's high standard of living, pleasant place to work. Second, Auschwitz developed a standard operating procedure that the Nazis in and beyond the camp-including the German public cognizant CHAPTER 7
Understanding Willing Participants, Volume 2, Dec 28, 2018
, the Wehrmacht invaded Poland, an act that initiated French and British declarations of war, and... more , the Wehrmacht invaded Poland, an act that initiated French and British declarations of war, and thus signaled the start of World War Two. With their massive numbers, superior weaponry, and Blitzkrieg tactics, the Wehrmacht quickly swept Polish defenders aside. Then, on 17 September, the Soviets attacked Poland from the east. As anticipated, the Polish civilian population fiercely resisted the Germans, typically in the form of sniper attacks. The Wehrmacht's usual wartime policy in dealing with civilian resistance was twofold. First, captured resisters were tried in a military court and if found guilty, executed. Second, if resisters evaded capture, community leaders were taken hostage and their lives threatened if the partisan activity continued. 1 However, on 3 September Himmler provided the German armed forces with a third and much swifter option: a shoot-to-kill authorization that allowed for the circumvention of a military trial. 2 Some members of the German armed forces interpreted the authorization as a right to kill whomever and whenever they wanted; indeed, this is what it was. Armed with such powers, sectors of the Einsatzgruppen occasionally engaged in mob-like violence, acts which greatly concerned the Wehrmacht Commander-in-Chief Walther von Brauchitsch. 3 Brauchitsch was so angry that on 21 September Himmler had to send Heydrich to personally smooth matters over with the powerful chief commander. Brauchitsch demanded one thing, the removal of Himmler's shoot-tokill order. In fear of having pushed influential figures in the Wehrmacht too far too soon, a few days later Himmler granted Brauchitsch's CHAPTER 3 World War Two and Nazi Forays into the Killing of Civilians
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