Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority Experiments
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Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority Experiments: Towards an Understanding of their Relevance in Explaining Aspects of the Nazi Holocaust By Nestar John Charles Russell A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Public Policy. Victoria University of Wellington 2009 Although the most common interpretation of Milgram’s findings is that participants did not wish to harm the learner, the motives generated in this paradigm may well have been more mixed or ambivalent in many participants. Unfortunately, the manner in which people actually regard the act of punishing others when they make mistakes . has been virtually ignored in discussions of the obedience research. However . harming is a widely accepted form of child discipline . Most people are hardly unequivocally opposed to the use of physical punishment under absolutely any circumstances. That a majority approve the use of capital punishment in this country [the United States] might serve as another illustration —Miller (2004, pp. 198-199). if humanity can survive the violence of our age, [our descendants] might consider us as late barbarians —Elias (1991, pp. 146-147). ii Abstract 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 Drawing on previously unpublished material from Milgram’s personal archive at Yale, this thesis investigates how Milgram developed his research idea to the point where, by the time he ran his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 the ways in which people in an organisational context resolve a pressing moral dilemma. The thesis uses insights gained from Milgram’s experimental innovations to assist in answering the question posed by Bauer and by Browning, focusing on the Nazis’ progressive development of mass killing methods, from 1941 to 1944, during Operation Barbarossa and Operation Reinhard. It is shown how these methods were designed to diminish perpetrators’ perceptual stimulation, in order to make the “undoable” increasingly “doable”, in ways that were later reflected in Milgram’s development of his own experimental methodology. iii Acknowledgements The completion of this thesis owes more than a great deal to the belief and scholarly influence of my primary academic supervisor Professor Bob Gregory. Bob is what I—and many other students—consider to be a “real academic”: an independent thinker not afraid to take big risks on the not-so-impressive end of the potential PhD candidate spectrum. Bob’s intellectual stamp is, of course, throughout the thesis. But it is most obvious in Chapter Nine, which extends into his specialist academic area of inquiry—the potentially destructive bureaucratic process. This chapter explores ideas and raises issues that, before meeting Bob, had never crossed my mind. I could easily go on in praise of Bob but, as modest as he is, I fear he’d tell me to settle down and to also “get off that high donkey”. Thanks Bob. I am also greatly indebted to my secondary supervisor, Holocaust historian Dr Simone Gigliotti of the History Programme, Victoria University of Wellington, who provided much needed advice in regard to this complex research area. Because Milgram’s legacy dominates the thesis, there was little room left in which to explore the Holocaust. Therefore, I was unable to go into the kind of detail Simone would have preferred. But Simone directed me to the most obvious weaknesses and gaps in my use of this literature, and her insights and careful guidance have been invaluable. The following were, in a variety of ways, of great help to me in the production of this thesis: Graeme Whimp, Dr Sara McFall, Margaret Nixon, Gina Perry, Professor Thomas Blass, Dr Sarah Anderson, Dr Judy Whitcombe, Jovian Parry, Doug Dixon, Dr Anna McKenzie, Katherine Hodge, Professor José Brunner, Sebastian Glende, Craig Elvidge, Tanja Rother, Dr Anne Phillips, and Dr Gabrielle Maxwell. I would also like to thank the following people: Amanda Lynn, Dawn Yeabsley, Dr Chris Eichbaum, Lyne Todd, Maria Modig, Diane Kaplan (and her staff at Yale University), Professor Terry Stokes, Professor Gary Hawke, Dr Amanda Wolf, Dr Eva Beuselinck, Professor Omer Bartov, Professor Robert van Krieken, Jean-Christopher Somers, Barbara Gillespie, Francine McGee, Siamah Kaullychurn, Jessie Williams, Dr Trevor Bradley, Dr Douglas Lush, Wayne Pihema, Murdoch Stephens, Garoon Pongsart, Dr Mark Thornton, iv Robin O’Neal, Chris Boorman, Nick Sygrove, Rachael James, Craig Mills, Sally-Anne Bennett, Maureen Revell, Brenda Collver, Stephen Eames, Dee Jones, Zoe Lawton; Michelle Walmsley, and Jane Snaider. Finally, thanks to Stacey, Gareth, Nick, Jason, Marty, and Lisa for the welcomed distractions and my family, Mum, Dad, Kelly, and Shelena, all of whom offered support when needed. All responsibility for the content of this thesis rests with the author. All correspondence to: [email protected] v Table of Contents Abstract …………………………………………………………………………… ……... iii Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………….............. iv Table of Contents …………………………………………………………………............. vi List of Illustrations ………………………………………………………………………... ix Chapter One: Introduction ……………………………………………………………….. 1 1.1 A Brief Overview of the Thesis…...………………………………………….......... 1 1.2 Central Aims……………………………………………………………………… 3 1.3 Key Research Questions…………………………………………………………… 3 1.4 Chapter Overview…………………………………………………………….......... 4 Chapter Two: Methodological Approach …………………………………………........... 6 2.1 The Author’s Journey into the PhD Candidacy……………………………..……... 6 2.2 Research Strategy and Sources of Data…………………………………..………... 8 2.3 Approach to Data-Collection……………………………………………..………... 10 2.4 Data Analysis: Documentary Analysis and Case Studies………………….............. 11 Chapter Three: The Problem of “Ordinary Monsters” and the Holocaust—a Review of the Literature …………………………..……………………………..………… 15 3.1 The Holocaust: a Brief Overview…………………………………………..……… 15 3.2 Introduction to the Problem of “Ordinary Monsters”……………………...………. 16 3.3 Stanley Milgram and the Obedience to Authority Experiments…………...………. 17 3.4 The Milgram-Holocaust Linkage…………………………………………...……… 20 Chapter Four: The Development of Milgram’s Obedience to Authority Experiments ………………………………………………………………………............... 31 4.1 Stanley Milgram: Beginnings and Early Influences………………………..……… 31 4.2 Harvard University and the Influence of Solomon Asch………...…….…............... 34 4.3 Milgram’s PhD Thesis………………………………………………….…….......... 36 4.4 Milgram’s Experience at Princeton: the Invention of the OTA Experiments and Influence of the Holocaust ………..…………………...………... 40 4.5 Conclusion…………………………………………………...…....………...……... 49 Chapter Five: How Milgram Induced Most Ordinary Subjects to Complete the Obedience to Authority Experiments ……………………………………......………... 50 vi 5.1 The First Obedience to Authority Research Proposal……………..………..……… 50 5.2 First Pilot Study: the Winter Pre-tests 1960-61 ……………………………..……... 55 5.3 The Second OTA Research Proposal……………………………………..…........... 60 5.4 Second Pilot Series: Summer Pre-tests 1961 ………………………………............. 66 5.5 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………..……... 69 Chapter Six: The Obedience to Authority Research Programme and Milgram’s Explanation of His Findings ………………………………….………............. 72 6.1 Further Variations and Controls: ad hoc Testing of Justifications………………….75 6.2 Further Variations and Controls: Conditions Stimulated by Emerging Questions…………………………………………………………………………....76 6.3 Further Variations and Controls: the Proximity of Authority Series…………......... 80 6.4 The Role Permutations Series……………………………………………………… 81 6.5 The Group Effects Series…………………………………………………………... 83 6.6 Post-Experimental Contemplations on Theoretical Development…………............. 87 6.7 Milgram’s (1974) Theory of Obedience…………………………………………… 91 6.8 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………....……. 95 Chapter Seven: The Response of Academia to Milgram’s Findings and Explanation ………………………………………………………………………………... 97 7.1 Ethical Issues………………………………………………………………………. 97 7.2 Methodological Criticisms………………………………………………...….......... 106 7.3 Generalisation: the Milgram-Holocaust Linkage…………………………...………113 7.4 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………...……...121 Chapter Eight: Rethinking Milgram’s Theoretical Model: the State of Autonomous Denial (SAD) …………………………………………………………........... 123 8.1 Why Did Most Subjects Complete the Baseline Experiment?...................................123 8.2 Rethinking Milgram’s Theoretical Model…………………………………………. 132 8.3 Milgram’s Web: the Gradual Seduction and Systematic Ensnarement of Subjects………………………………………………………………………….. 134 8.4 The Shift from the State of Autonomy to the SAD………………………………....139 8.5 The Binding Factor of the Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon Reducing Feelings of Responsibility………………………………….…………………........ 140 8.6 The Supplied