Milgram and the Holocaust: A reexamination.

Abstract

The Milgram obedience studies are widely presented in psychology textbooks as integral to understanding the behavior of Holocaust perpetrators. Recent appraisals of the Milgram legacy have not challenged this view. Discussions of the Holocaust in the historical literature are often cited by psychologists to support the claim of the centrality of the Milgram studies to understanding the Holocaust. More recent historical literature presents a different view of the Holocaust, one that directly questions the relevance of Milgram's obedience studies in understanding the Holocaust. This view has not been well represented in discussions of Milgram in psychology, and is discussed here. The nature of the evidence for the ecological validity of the Milgram studies, and the broader issue of the role of the Milgram studies as "scientific parables" are also discussed. Authors of future psychology textbooks may wish to examine the controversial nature of the claim that Milgram's studies are central to understanding the Holocaust more fully.

Shock Treatment: Using Immersive Digital Realism to Restage and Re-examine Milgram’s ‘Obedience to Authority’ Research

“…Here Arendt’s portrayal of Adolf Eichmann as an ordinary bureaucrat, so focussed on making the trains run on time that he forgot he was transporting millions to their death, seemed to put the stamp of historical authenticity on Milgram’s analysis. Yet a range of recent studies of perpetrators in general, of Nazi functionaries, and of Eichmann himself have questioned just how banal and unaware these people were [18] , [19] , [20] , [21] . Contrary to the suggestion that they were merely puppets of those in authority, it seems that they knew exactly what they were doing, that they believed in what they were doing, and that they showed considerable creativity in pursuing and exterminating their victims.…”

Ernest Becker and Stanley Milgram: Twentieth-century students of evil.

“…92-93) Almost all Milgram's biographers and students of his life and work accept his obedience studies as an attempt to explicate the nature and causes of human evil, especially as manifest in the Holocaust (whether or not they agree with the validity of such an explication). Numerous critical questions and assessments of Milgram's experimental methods and theories as relevant to the question of evil have been raised and elaborated (e.g., Mastroianni, 2002;Nicholson, 2011aNicholson, , 2011bReicher, Haslam, & Miller, 2014;Stam, Lubek, & Radtke, 1998).…”

The Explanatory Value of Milgram's Obedience Experiments: A Contemporary Appraisal

“…Arendt's depiction of Eichmann appears to have been incorrect, but Milgram's obedient participants did in fact seem to embody her conceptualization of the banality of evil: “The ordinary person who shocked the victim did so out of a sense of obligation—a conception of his duties as a subject—and not from any peculiarly aggressive tendencies” (Milgram, , p. 6). A far less generous view was presented by Mastroianni (): “Much of psychology's commitment to the ecological validity of the Milgram studies with respect to the Holocaust is…not derived from a careful and systematic comparison of the behavior of Milgram's subjects and Holocaust perpetrators, but instead flows from the dramatic, even theatrical power of the studies to validate, legitimize, and popularize social psychology for students and others” (p. 170). This criticism reflects, at least in part, the lack of a convincing theoretical explanation of Milgram's findings.…”

“…Arendt's depiction of Eichmann appears to have been incorrect, but Milgram's obedient participants did in fact seem to embody her conceptualization of the banality of evil: "The ordinary person who shocked the victim did so out of a sense of obligation-a conception of his duties as a subject-and not from any peculiarly aggressive tendencies" (Milgram, 1974, p. 6). A far less generous view was presented by Mastroianni (2002): "Much of psychology's commitment to the ecological validity of the Milgram studies with respect to the Holocaust is . .…”