Stanley Milgram
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Stanley Milgram (August 15, 1933 – December 20, 1984) was an American social psychologist known for his controversial experiments on obedience conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at
Yale Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...
.Blass, T. (2004). ''The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram''. Milgram was influenced by the events of the
Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
, especially the trial of Adolf Eichmann, in developing the experiment. After earning a PhD in
social psychology Social psychology is the methodical study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. Although studying many of the same substantive topics as its counterpart in the field ...
from
Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
, he taught at
Yale Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...
,
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...
, and then for most of his career as a professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center, until his death in 1984. Milgram gained notoriety for his obedience experiment conducted in the basement of Linsly-Chittenden Hall at
Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
in 1961, three months after the start of the trial of German
Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
war criminal A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostage ...
Adolf Eichmann in
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. The experiment found, unexpectedly, that a very high proportion of subjects would fully obey the instructions, albeit reluctantly. Milgram first described his research in a 1963 article in the '' Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology''as PDF.
and later discussed his findings in greater depth in his 1974 book, '' Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.'' His other small-world experiment, while at
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...
, led researchers to analyze the degree of connectedness, including the six degrees of separation concept. Later in his career, Milgram developed a technique for creating interactive hybrid social agents (called cyranoids), which has since been used to explore aspects of social- and self-perception. He is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of social psychology. A ''
Review of General Psychology ''Review of General Psychology'' is the quarterly scientific journal of the American Psychological Association Division 1: The Society for general psychology. The journal publishes cross-disciplinary psychological articles that are conceptual, theo ...
'' survey, published in 2002, ranked Milgram as the 46th-most-cited psychologist of the 20th century.


Biography


Early life, education, and family

Milgram was born in 1933 in
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
(
the Bronx The Bronx ( ) is the northernmost of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It shares a land border with Westchester County, New York, West ...
) to
Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
parents. His parents were Adele (born Israel) and Samuel Milgram (1898–1953), who had immigrated to the United States from Romania and Hungary respectively during
World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
. He was the second of three children. Milgram's immediate and extended family were both affected by
the Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
. After the war, relatives of his who had survived
Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
concentration camp A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitati ...
s and bore concentration camp tattoos stayed with the Milgram family in New York for a time. His
Bar Mitzvah A ''bar mitzvah'' () or ''bat mitzvah'' () is a coming of age ritual in Judaism. According to Halakha, Jewish law, before children reach a certain age, the parents are responsible for their child's actions. Once Jewish children reach that age ...
speech in 1946 was on the subject of the plight of the European Jews and the impact that the events of
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
would have on Jewish people around the world. He said, upon becoming a man under Jewish law: "As I ... find happiness in joining the ranks of Israel, the knowledge of the tragic suffering of my fellow Jews ... makes this ... an occasion to reflect upon the heritage of my people—which now becomes mine. ... I shall try to understand my people and do my best to share the responsibilities which history has placed upon all of us." He later wrote to a friend from childhood: "I should have been born into the German-speaking Jewish community of Prague in 1922 and died in a
gas chamber A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. Poisonous agents used include hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide. History Donatie ...
some 20 years later. How I came to be born in the Bronx Hospital, I'll never quite understand." Milgram's interest in the Holocaust had its basis in what his biographer, Professor Thomas Blass, referred to as Milgram's "lifelong identification with the Jewish people". Author Kirsten Fermaglich wrote that Milgram as an adult had "a personal conflict as a Jewish man who perceived himself both as an outsider, a victim of the Nazi destruction, and as an insider, as scientist." Alexandra stated that Milgram's Jewish identity led to his focus on the Holocaust and his obedience-to-authority research. He shared this as well with Herbert Winer, one of his obedience study subjects, who noted after speaking to Milgram about the experiment that "Milgram was very Jewish. I was Jewish. We talked about this. There was obviously a motive behind neutral research." Milgram married his wife, Alexandra, in a ceremony at the Brotherhood Synagogue in
Greenwich Village Greenwich Village, or simply the Village, is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street (Manhattan), 14th Street to the north, Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the s ...
in Manhattan on December 10, 1961, and they had two children, Michele and Marc. At the time of his death, Milgram lived in
New Rochelle, New York New Rochelle ( ; in ) is a Political subdivisions of New York State#City, city in Westchester County, New York, Westchester County, New York (state), New York, United States. It is a suburb of New York City, located approximately from Midtow ...
. Milgram's father worked as a baker, providing a modest income for his family until his death in 1953 (upon which Stanley's mother took over the bakery). Milgram attended public elementary school and James Monroe High School in the Bronx. (One of Milgram's classmates at James Monroe High School was Philip Zimbardo, the architect of the Stanford prison experiment. Milgram and Zimbardo also shared an affinity for the popular television program '' Candid Camera'' and an admiration for its creator, Allen Funt..) By the time he was college age, his family had moved to nearby
Queens Queens is the largest by area of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located near the western end of Long Island, it is bordered by the ...
. In 1954, Milgram received his bachelor's degree in political science from Queens College in New York, He also studied at
Brooklyn College Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn in New York City, United States. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls nearly 14,000 students on a campus in the Midwood and Flatbush sections of Brooklyn as of fall ...
"Psychology of Personality" and "An Eclectic Approach to Social Psychology". He applied to a PhD program in
social psychology Social psychology is the methodical study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. Although studying many of the same substantive topics as its counterpart in the field ...
at
Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
, and was initially rejected due to an insufficient background in psychology (he had not taken any undergraduate courses in psychology at Queens College). He was eventually accepted to Harvard in 1954.


Academic career

In 1961, Milgram received a PhD in social psychology from Harvard. He became an assistant professor at Yale in the fall of 1960. He served as an assistant professor in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard from 1963 to 1966 on a three-year contract. The contract was then extended for one additional year, but with the lower rank of a lecturer. In 1967 he accepted an offer to become a tenured full professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center, and he taught at City University until he died in 1984. Milgram had a number of significant influences, including psychologists
Solomon Asch Solomon Eliot Asch (September 14, 1907 – February 20, 1996) was a Polish people, Polish-United States of America, American Gestalt psychology, Gestalt psychologist and pioneer in social psychology. He created seminal pieces of work in impressi ...
and
Gordon Allport Gordon William Allport (November 11, 1897 – October 9, 1967) was an American psychologist. Allport was one of the first psychologists to focus on the study of the personality, and is often referred to as one of the founding figures of personali ...
.


Death

Milgram died on December 20, 1984, aged 51, of a
heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when Ischemia, blood flow decreases or stops in one of the coronary arteries of the heart, causing infarction (tissue death) to the heart muscle. The most common symptom ...
in New York City. It was his fifth heart attack. He left behind a widow, Alexandra "Sasha" Milgram, a daughter, Michele Sara, and a son, Marc Daniel.


Obedience to authority

In 1963, Milgram submitted the results of his obedience experiments in the article "Behavioral Study of Obedience". In the ensuing controversy, the
American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychologists in the United States, and the largest psychological association in the world. It has over 170,000 members, including scientists, educators, clin ...
held up his application for membership for a year because of questions about the ethics of his work, but eventually did grant him full membership. Ten years later, in 1974, Milgram published ''Obedience to Authority''. He won the AAAS Prize for Behavioral Science Research in 1964, mostly for his work on the social aspects of obedience. Inspired in part by the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, his models were later also used to explain the 1968 My Lai massacre (including authority training in the military, depersonalizing the "enemy" through racial and cultural differences, etc.). He produced a film depicting his experiments, which are considered classics of social psychology. An article in ''American Psychologist'' sums up Milgram's obedience experiments: More recent tests of the experiment have found that it only works under certain conditions; in particular, when participants believe the results are necessary for the "good of science". According to Milgram, "the essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person's wishes, and he therefore no longer sees himself as responsible for his actions. Once this critical shift of viewpoint has occurred in the person, all of the essential features of obedience follow." Thus, "the major problem for the subject is to recapture control of his own regnant processes once he has committed them to the purposes of the experimenter." Besides this hypothetical agentic state, Milgram proposed the existence of other factors accounting for the subject's obedience: politeness, awkwardness of withdrawal, absorption in the technical aspects of the task, the tendency to attribute impersonal quality to forces that are essentially human, a belief that the experiment served a desirable end, the sequential nature of the action, and anxiety. A competing explanation of Milgram's results invokes belief perseverance as the underlying factor. What "people cannot be counted on is to realize that a seemingly benevolent authority is in fact malevolent, even when they are faced with overwhelming evidence which suggests that this authority is indeed malevolent. Hence, the underlying cause for the subjects' striking conduct could well be conceptual, and not the alleged 'capacity of man to abandon his humanity . . . as he merges his unique personality into larger institutional structures.'" Inspired by the horrific events of Nazi Germany, Milgram's obedience experiments have been used to explain a range of social influences on the individual—including how police interrogators can get innocent people to confess to crimes they did not commit. At the same time, these experiments have come under attack. Some critics questioned whether subjects sensed the unreality of the situation. Others questioned the relevance of the laboratory setting to the real world. The most devastating criticisms involved the ethics of the basic experimental design. Professor Milgram, for his part, felt that such misgivings were traceable to the unsavory nature of his results: "Underlying the criticism of the experiment," Milgram wrote, "is an alternative model of human nature, one holding that when confronted with a choice between hurting others and complying with authority, normal people reject authority." Daniel Raver looks back:


Small-world phenomenon

The six degrees of separation concept was examined in Milgram's 1967 "small-world experiment", which tracked chains of acquaintances in the United States. In the experiment, Milgram sent several packages to 160 random people living in Omaha, Nebraska, asking them to forward the package to a friend or acquaintance who they thought would bring the package closer to a set final individual, a stockbroker from Boston, Massachusetts. Each "starter" received instructions to mail a folder via the U.S. Post Office to a recipient, but with some rules. Starters could only mail the folder to someone they actually knew personally on a first-name basis. When doing so, each starter instructed their recipient to mail the folder ahead to one of the latter's first-name acquaintances with the same instructions, with the hope that their acquaintance might by some chance know the target recipient. Given that starters knew only the target recipient's name and address, they had a seemingly impossible task. Milgram monitored the progress of each chain via returned "tracer" postcards, which allowed him to track the progression of each letter. Surprisingly, he found that the very first folder reached the target in just four days and took only two intermediate acquaintances. Overall, Milgram reported that chains varied in length from two to ten intermediate acquaintances, with a median of five intermediate acquaintances (i.e. six degrees of separation) between the original sender and the destination recipient. Milgram's "six degrees" theory has been severely criticized. He did not follow up on many of the sent packages, and as a result, scientists are unconvinced that there are merely "six degrees" of separation. Elizabeth DeVita–Raebu has discussed potential problems with Milgram's experiment. In 2008, a study by Microsoft showed that the average chain of contacts between users of its '.NET Messenger Service' (later called Microsoft Messenger service) was 6.6 people.


Lost letter experiment

Milgram developed a technique, called the "lost letter" experiment, for measuring how helpful people are to strangers who are not present, and their attitudes toward various groups. Several sealed and stamped letters were planted in public places, addressed to various entities, such as individuals, favorable organizations like medical research institutes, and stigmatized organizations such as "Friends of the Nazi Party". Milgram found most of the letters addressed to individuals and favorable organizations were mailed, while most of those addressed to stigmatized organizations were not.


Anti-social behavior experiment

In 1970–71, Milgram conducted experiments which attempted to find a correlation between media consumption (in this case, watching television) and anti-social behavior. The experiment presented the opportunity to steal money, donate to charity, or neither, and tested whether the rate of each choice was influenced by watching similar actions in the ending of a specially crafted episode of the popular series '' Medical Center''.


Cyranoids

In 1977 Milgram began piloting an experimental procedure that aimed to operationalize the mind-body fusion fantasy explored in the Edmond Rostand play ''Cyrano de Bergerac''. In the story, Cyrano supplies Christian with amorous prose so that they may jointly woo Roxane (each being incapable, given their respective physical and linguistic limitations, of doing so on their own). Milgram trained speech shadowers to replicate in real-time spontaneous prose supplied by a remote "source" by-way-of discreet radio transmission during face-to-face dialogue with naïve "interactants". In homage to Cyrano, he referred to the hybrid agent formed by combining the words of one individual with the body of another as a " cyranoid". In his studies, interactants repeatedly failed to detect that their interlocutors were merely speech shadowing for third parties, implicitly and explicitly attributing to them communicative autonomy. Milgram referred to this phenomenon as the "cyranic illusion". This illusion held even in circumstances involving high disparity between shadower and source, such as when he sourced for child shadowers while being interviewed by panels of teachers (naïve to the deception) tasked with assessing each child's intellectual abilities. Milgram hoped that the cyranoid method could evolve into a useful means of interactively exploring phenomena related to social behavior and self-perception (e.g., racial, gender, and age-based stereotyping and behavioral confirmation). Though he continued to develop the methodology through 1984 (the year of his death), he never prepared a formal publication detailing his cyranoid experiments. In 2014, social psychologists at the
London School of Economics The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), established in 1895, is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the University of London. The school specialises in the social sciences. Founded ...
published the first replications of Milgram's original pilots. Robb Mitchell has explored cyranoids as an experiential learning tool within the classroom (having children shadow for teachers during teaching exercises). Cyranoids have also been used in installation art to explore social experiences whereby people encounter those familiar to them through the bodies of strangers.


References in media

In 1975, CBS presented a made-for-television movie about obedience experiments, '' The Tenth Level'', with
William Shatner William Shatner (born March 22, 1931) is a Canadian actor. In a career spanning seven decades, he is best known for his portrayal of James T. Kirk in the ''Star Trek'' franchise, from his 1966 debut as the captain of the starship USS Enterpri ...
as Stephen Hunter, a Milgram-like scientist. Milgram was a consultant for the film, though the accuracy of the film has been contested by Milgram himself. In 1980, musician
Peter Gabriel Peter Brian Gabriel (born 13 February 1950) is an English singer, songwriter, musician, and human rights activist. He came to prominence as the original frontman of the rock band Genesis. He left the band in 1975 and launched a solo career wit ...
wrote a song called "We Do What We're Told (Milgram's 37)", referring to the number of subjects who administered the maximum shock in another one of the experiments - 37 out of 40. While it was played live on his 1980 tour, Gabriel did not release a studio version of the song until 1986, on his 5th album "So". Milgram 18 was reproduced to test the participants in a 2008 television special '' The Heist''. Created by Derren Brown and Andy Nyman for British station
Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...
, the Milgram experiment helped determine which would be given the opportunity to rob a (fake) armoured bank van. Milgram is a character in Chip Kidd's novel "The Learners" (2008), overseeing his experiments at Yale. In March 2010, French television channel
France 2 France 2 () is a French free-to-air public television channel. The flagship channel of France Télévisions, it broadcasts generalist programming including news, entertainment (such as dramas, films, and game shows), factual programmes, and sp ...
broadcast ''Jusqu'où va la télé'', describing the results of a fake game show that they had run 80 times (each time independently, and with a new contestant and audience). The contestants received instructions to administer what they thought would be near fatal electric shocks to another "contestant" (really an actor) when they erred on memorized word-associations. The vast majority followed instructions even as the "victim" screamed. In 2015, an experimental biopic about Milgram called '' Experimenter'' was released, directed by Michael Almereyda. Peter Sarsgaard stars as Stanley Milgram. In 2020, an online project known as the MILGRAM project portrays how a human would act if faced with the decision of being a prison guard to 10 different murderers. The project is still ongoing and has yet to be confirmed on its roots.


See also

*
Harvard Department of Social Relations The Department of Social Relations was an interdisciplinary collaboration among three of the social science departments at Harvard University (anthropology, psychology, and sociology) beginning in 1946. Originally, the program was headquartered in ...
* Silent Generation * Small-world phenomenon * Breaching experiment * Philip Zimbardo (Lucifer Effect) * Stanford prison experiment * List of ethicists * List of experiments * List of psychologists * List of social psychologists


References


Further reading

* Milgram, S. (1974), ''Obedience to Authority; An Experimental View'' * Milgram, S. (1977), ''The individual in a social world: Essays and experiments''. 3rd expanded edition published 2010 by Pinter & Martin, . * Blass, T. (2004). ''The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram''. * Milgram, S. (1965), ''Liberating Effects of Group Pressure'

* *


External links


Guide to the Stanley Milgram Papers, Manuscripts and Archives
Yale University Library

Chapter 1 and Chapter 15 {{DEFAULTSORT:Milgram, Stanley 20th-century American psychologists American social psychologists Jewish American psychologists Harvard University Department of Psychology faculty Harvard University alumni Brooklyn College alumni Queens College, City University of New York alumni Ig Nobel laureates Scientists from New Rochelle, New York Scientists from the Bronx American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent American people of Romanian-Jewish descent 20th-century American Jews 1933 births 1984 deaths