When in doubt, experiment!
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Milgram seemed to share the showmanship of P.T. Barnum and ingenuity of reality show creator Mark Burnett. If Milgram were alive, he might have been a top reality show creator.
Milgram seems most notable not for the results of his experiments but for their conception and content. He hardly modified the approach used by Asch in his conformity experiments, which relied on deception, but he changed the subject to something considerably more striking. The result may have been significant, but think about it: any result would have attracted attention. Comparing the experimental situation with concentration camp situation is what first made the experiment newsworthy. If the result had been that no one or very few shocked, then news could have been generated of how much better behaved Americans are. Or if Germans also didn't shock much, it could have been claimed people nowadays are much better behaved than folks back in World War II. Given the catchy experiment, the results hardly mattered in the sense that the very description of what the experiment was doing would catch people's attention.
Which isn't necessarily bad. Milgram brought social psychology out of relative obscurity. To a good extent, he bailed out psychology in general, whose reputation had been damaged by decades of speculations without much support.
As a situationist, Milgram recognized that our social lives are quite complex. Rather than spend much time theorizing, he experimented. Don't know? Don't invent a reason, go gather facts. It's a measure of just how complex we are socially that even having gathered results, as with the "obedience" experiments, Milgram seemed at a lost to explain what was happening. Blass notes about Milgram's "Obedience to Authority book" that "Milgram's theorizing is the weakest part of the book". Milgram's feeble appeal to cybernetics contrasts sharply with his description of the experiment. Blass also notes that the kind of "obedience" Milgram studied doesn't seem at all sufficient to explain what happened during the Holocaust.
Milgram shouldn't be faulted for the problems with his theorizing. How many psychologists can theorize well? There's still an enormous amount we don't know about ourselves and the way we interact. Milgram's gift seems to have been sensing that and instead finding novel ways to help us to learn about ourselves. Even if the content and results of his experiments are someday forgotten, the spirit of bold experimentation that Milgram brought to social psychology will be of great value. Blass communicates that. So I don't know if Blass is the "undisputed expert" but the book seems well-researched and quite readable.
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A superb biography of a fascinating man
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Milgram is famous for his obediance experiments. This superb biography provides the background to Milgram's interest in thi work, some wonderful details of the series of experiments he did, and his subsequent work. The highlight is the carefully detailed description of the obedience experiments and reactions to them.
Milgram was a very creative sociologist and worked on many other topics, including the famous "six degrees of freedom" experiment where he had people post letters to strangers via folk they already knew. Few academics are as adventurous and creative as Milgram was.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book, as did my teeange sons who usually only read fiction.
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