Biography

[b]Family History[/b][br /]
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Stanley Milgram is known all over the world as a great psychologist whose ideas sometimes generated considerable controversy, but taking a look at his background might reflect his motives for conducting his experiments. He was born in relative peace compared to the horror and terror his parents had to face before they managed to make it to America.[br /]
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Stanley's father was Samuel Milgram and his mother was Adele Israel. Samuel and Adele both were born and brought up in eastern Germany, though Samuel was of Hungarian origin and Adele of Romanian. There is reason to believe that both the families' ancestors had migrated over the centuries across German Austria into Eastern Germany and settled over there.[br /]
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Life before the Nazi Regime had been prosperous and relatively peaceful for the Jewish family. Samuel had inherited a bakery from his father. The Milgram family was in the upper class of the society and the bakery was quite famous in the whole of town.[br /]
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After the end of First World War, like the evil head of a terrible monster rearing its head, the Third Reich came into formation in Nazi Germany. Hitler came to power. The Nazis, as is well known, had a belief that they were a super race, and so they took up the task of exterminating races that they felt were inferior. Jews were non-Aryans, and so the Nazis targeted them. A sort of hatred was spread across the whole of Germany for the Jews. The Nazis were propagating pure Aryan theory among the people of Germany. This hatred spread like a wild fire across all the major cities, towns and villages. Jews were victimized and killed, while their houses were plundered. The bloodshed was not to leave the little town where the Milgram family was residing peacefully. The Germans staged demonstrations against the Jews. In the darkness of night, the Gestapo, the military police, would come and the Jews would either be killed or taken as prisoners and sent to torture camps. Most of Samuel Milgram's close friends and associates became the victims of the Swastika. As it was just the beginning and the Milgrams were in good position in the society, they were not immediately targeted.[br /]
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[b]Escaping the Oppression[/b][br /]
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But the mayhem was not to elude them for long. One dark night their bakery was looted and razed to ground. Samuel decided to flee Germany along with his wife. The conditions of their miraculous escape are not quite clear, but they collected whatever possessions they could take along and one autumnal night, with many other refugees who had been such targets as themselves. They waved their good-byes to Germany as they left on a fishing trawler for the new Promised Land, America.[br /]
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It took them a few weeks across the cold Atlantic, living in harsh conditions on the trawler to arrive at New York Harbor. Their trawler arrived on the coast of New York on a cold winter morning. Samuel Milgram, along with his wife and other refugees, felt jubilation on seeing the sunlight dawn on the new Promised Land and a loud cheer rang among all of them. They landed on a clear cold winter day, amidst great revelry and back thumping, at New York harbor.[br /]
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Soon, Samuel established his family at a small one room quarter in the Jewish locality of the Bronx. He decided to find a vocation that he was best suited at, and so he got himself a job as an assistant baker in a bakery in downtown New York's east 52nd street. In the beginning, Samuel had to struggle a lot as most of their family valuables were left behind in Germany. They had fled with very little money, most of which had been used up for their safe passage to America from Germany. Most of the time Samuel used to work double shifts at the bakery. His wife Adele used to sew clothes for the neighborhood children to help her husband with the savings.[br /]
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Slowly Samuel stabilized the condition of his home. They moved too much bigger and better quarters in the same Jewish neighborhood. The Milgrams were very friendly and helpful to their neighbors and were liked by all. As they had to leave Germany in abnormal conditions, other well-established Jewish families gave a generous helping hand to the Milgrams.[br /]
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[b]Birth[/b][br /]
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After stabilizing and establishing themselves Samuel and Adele decided to have their first child. On a clear spring day, on August 15, 1933, a healthy baby boy was born to the Milgrams. Samuel and Adele named the boy Stanley after one of their forefathers who had stabilized the migrating Milgrams in eastern Germany and established them centuries ago.[br /]
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Stanley Milgram, as a young child, was a very active, outgoing and aggressive child. Full of talent he excelled in outdoor sports and was one of the local neighborhood baseball champions. He was the vice-captain of the baseball team among the neighborhood children. He was a healthy, tireless child and was able to compete in almost every field where children were contenders. Though such wonderful virtues unrestrained might make a child bossy and arrogant, such was not the case with Stanley Milgram. Adele and Samuel kept a strong lease around him and developed a sense of discipline and respect for the society in him. He was made to understand and learn deeply about his Jewish identity. He even started attending Sunday school to learn Hebrew with other children of his neighborhood from a Rabbi.[br /]
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Stanley, from the beginning itself, was very intelligent and would very readily adapt to changes and learn new things. He was strongly idealistic right from childhood. He liked to enjoy games of challenge with a strong element of chance. As a strong sense for humanity was developed in him, he would always be the first to help the needy. He would always volunteer to help whenever any problem occurred anywhere. He became very well known among all his friends for his helpful nature.[br /]
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[b]School Days[/b][br /]
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Samuel and Adele admitted Stanley at the James Monroe High School. They wanted him to have a good education so that he could rise high enough in his life. They made him understand that good work, well done, would sooner or later elicit appropriate admiration and would bring a thrill of accomplishment which would help in building a strong worth-while character and bring satisfaction in life.[br /]
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Stanley Milgram, in school, was highly admired as a very intelligent student by his teachers. Right from his childhood he had developed a deep interest in mathematics and science. He was always curious to know things and would only get satisfied after receiving the answers to his every question. He would take immense interest in his studies as well as outdoor sports. He would always be keen to understand his subjects from practical point of view.[br /]
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[b]An Everlasting Imprint[/b][br /]
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An incidence worth mentioning occurred when he was just 12 years old. He had gone on a trip to Santa Monica along with his parents. There he visited a bookstore where by chance he encountered photographs taken of the Nazi concentration camps. Never until then in his life had he seen - in photographs or in real life - such horror scenes. The photographs were of half burnt people living in hell like conditions. They cut into him very sharply and deeply. Ever since then it seemed to him to think of his life as being divided into two parts; before he saw those photographs and after. This photographs, though unknown then, would help in shaping the future course of his career. They changed his life, though not until several years later did he understand what they were about. After that, wherever he went, whatever he did; those photographs left an everlasting imprint on his memory.[br /]
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In school, his complete devotion to studies started to show results when he earned his school's gold medal in biology and got selected in the honor society of the school. His parents' hopes in him started taking shape slowly. He was one of the most active participants in the school's extra-curricular activities. He was selected the editor of the school's science magazine. His first article was printed in 1949 and was on the effects of radiation causing leukemia in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors. It was a very detailed article after thorough research on his part and was highly appreciated by his teachers.[br /]
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Along with his studies and playing during his childhood, Milgram was also highly interested in acting. In his early school days, he participated in many schools plays, often in the lead role. This influence of acting was also reflected in his high school days when he took up the task of directing the school's plays. He had a high degree of imagination and creativity, which helped him to excel in this field also.[br /]
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[b]The Smartest Kid[/b][br /]
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Milgram was considered the smartest kid in the school because of his varied interests in different fields. He always used to experiment in his high school days. Acting came to him as naturally as breathing and he tried to understand the subtleties and intricacies of the stage. His closest friend in high school was Philip Zimbardo, who would also become a well-known social psychologist and the mastermind of the famous Stanford Prison experiments. Milgram was highly influenced by Zimbardo's interest in the working of the human psychology in the society. Because of his own varied interests in different fields, Milgram was slowly drawn to psychology. He graduated from his high school in 1950.[br /]
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[b]Early Career[/b][br /]
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Samuel Milgram had established himself very well by the time Stanley passed his high school. Samuel and Adele had worked very hard over the years and had tried to save every penny they could. Samuel bought up a Bakery and a new Bungalow in the Queen's province of New York State. The family fortunes were again on the rise and after the completion of Milgram's high school, the family moved to their new home in Queen's.[br /]
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Soon, he took up admission in the Queen's college. By this time his interests had moved away from science and he took up courses in political philosophy, music and art. Nothing that was much remarkable happened in his early college days, though he slowly progressed on to get appointed as the Vice President of the debating club and the International Relation's club. During these days, he also developed a hobby for writing songs. He used to arrange inter-college debating competitions and student exchange programs with other universities and colleges.[br /]
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[b]Falling In Love[/b][br /]
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During this time, in one of the above-mentioned events, he came across a wonderful girl called Alexandra. Infatuation was quickly followed with falling in love with her. Alexandra was tall, beautiful and had a high level of intelligence not unlike him, though she was two years junior to him. They started dating occasionally, sometimes for lunch or dinner. Alexandra had a keen interest in human psychology despite being a student of arts. This interest of Alexandra slowly started to revive Milgram's own interest in social psychology. He graduated from Queen's college Phi Beta Kappa in 1954, majoring with Political Science.[br /]
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[b]A Growing Interest[/b][br /]
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After graduating from the college, most of his friends took up jobs, but Milgram was more interested to pursue higher studies. He got accepted into a graduate program at Columbia University's school of International affairs in preparation for a position in the Foreign Service. During this time, he continued to date Alexandra regularly, due to which his interest in social psychology was increasing day by day.[br /]
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In the senior year of his graduation in Columbia, a realization finally dawned on him that although he was intrigued and interested in the questions raised by great philosopher's like Plato, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, he was unwilling to accept their mode of arriving at answers. He was interested in human questions that could be answered by objective methods.[br /]
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At the same time, he came to know about the Ford Foundation's program to shift people into behavioral sciences by offering them different courses at the department of social relations at Harvard. The program was a combination of social psychology, clinical psychology, social anthropology and sociology. Many of the faculties were well known names in the social sciences including Talcott Parsons, Erik Erikson, and Roger Brown. He changed his plans from going to foreign services and instead applied for the PhD program for the same.[br /]
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Initially, he was not accepted into the program because he had not taken any social psychology courses. He was very keen to take up the course and so he appealed to the department's faculty. The department asked him to take up pre-requisite summer courses for the same, after which only he would be admitted to the program at Harvard.
Milgram took up six different psychology courses in the summer of 1955 from three different colleges, as they were a pre-requisite for his admission to the Harvard. His first two summer courses were in the Hunter College. Then, after completion he shifted to the Brooklyn College for another two summer courses in the same field. He then finally shifted to the New York University's summer course for the final two courses.[br /]
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After completing his six different summer courses from the three different colleges, he finally got admitted in the PhD program at Harvard as a special non-matriculating student in the fall semester. Despite admission, he was still asked by the authorities to prove his abilities in the first semester after which only they would allow him to complete the program. Milgram proved his highly developed skills and continued the program.[br /]
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During Milgram's days as Vice President of the International Relation's Club at Queen's College, he had come across Professor Gordon Allport and befriended him. When he joined up at the Harvard PhD program, he again came across his distinguished friend. Prof. Allport was one of the faculties in the same program, which Milgram was pursuing. But Allport was more into personality theory, in which Milgram was not interested, so Allport could not provide a specific intellectual input to him. Milgram was more interested in human behavior in the society as a whole and Allport made him realize about his high potential. Allport became Milgram's spiritual and emotional support.[br /]
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[b]The Strongest Intellectual Influence[/b][br /]
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At the same time, Solomon Asch, a highly renowned social psychologist and philosopher, arrived at Harvard. Asch came as a visiting lecturer and Milgram was asked to become his teaching and research assistant. Solomon Asch had designed a simple but informative experiment demonstrating the powerful influence group members have on convincing others to conform. Asch used a series of cards with lines of various lengths drawn on them and asked respondents to select lines of the same length. Asch found out that respondents would go along with the group and choose an obviously same answer about one third of the time if the rest of the group first selected the incorrect response. Stanley Milgram was very much impressed by this and Solomon Asch became Milgram's most important intellectual influence.[br /]
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Milgram's PhD dissertation was a cross-cultural study of conformity inspired by Asch's work conducted in Oslo and Paris. This dissertation was conducted under Gordon Allport, his longtime friend and spiritual influence, as Solomon Asch had left Harvard and gone to work for Princeton by the time Milgram started his dissertation work. Milgram then worked with Allport on his thesis. Though their views differed from each other, Allport was very encouraging and supportive to Milgram.[br /]
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[b]Lyrics That Would Make The Difference[/b][br /]
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At Harvard, Milgram's other important intellectual influences were Henry Murray, Roger Brown and Jerome Bruner. A worth-describing episode occurred between Milgram and Murray at Harvard. Milgram was doing a course under Murray. The episode, as it is told, is that Murray asked Milgram to write a song for him. At that time Harvard's construction department had torn down the historic old psychological clinic on Plimpton Street, and naturally everyone connected with it was very sad. Murray wanted Milgram to write a song about the old building, which he would then, present at a big dinner party with President Nathan Marsh Pusey of Harvard. At first Milgram declined, since he was up to his ears in work. But the song more or less spontaneously materialized. After that he gave Murray the song and went off to Europe to collect data for his thesis. He didn't even turn in the paper, which he owed to Murray for the course.[br /]
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So it was to be two years before he knew what had happened to the song. When he returned back from Europe he went to locate Murray to give him that long overdue paper feeling enormously guilty. When he met Murray the first thing Murray said to him was "Stanley Milgram! You should have seen how well it went over! It was because of your song that we got this building, you know!" Milgram's song was more important than the late paper. This goes forward to prove that Milgram was greatly liked and loved by all the individuals he came across.[br /]
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[b]The Beginning Of The Experiments[/b][br /]
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Milgram's PhD dissertation consisted of a series of experiments in which he along with his friends improvised some street-theater scenes. Along with his friends, he stopped at restaurants along the Massachusetts Turnpike, and enacted common human situations: Irate wife discovers her husband with another woman and rages at him in an incomprehensible foreign language. What impressed him was despite the extreme emotion in the encounter, onlookers conspicuously avoided involvement, and even when the husband shook and slapped his 'wife' in retaliation.[br /]
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Milgram decided then to use auditory stimuli rather than visual stimuli in his study. He wrote a series of experiments in which the subjects were to be exposed to people who needed help. The subjects would sit in a waiting room, and through a closed door they would overhear an argument between a man and a woman; the man would become increasingly aggressive in gradual steps, and finally the woman would cry for help. He planned to study when and under what conditions people would intervene. He designed a timer into the connecting door, so they would know exactly how long people delayed before helping. [br /]
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The dissertation work spanned over a period of two years and was conducted by Milgram in Europe. Milgram stayed in the cities of Oslo and Paris, where he conducted his dissertation work. While still at Harvard, his relationship with Alexandra had developed into a strong bond. Alexandra accompanied Milgram on his trip to Europe to help him with his dissertation work.[br /]
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Milgram's interest in travelling and trying to understand different cultures came into light over here. He took up a French course in Sorbonne in Paris. During one summer he went on a cross-continent motorbike trip from France to Spain and then to Italy. Such trips gave him great exposure to the communities of different people and their psychological set up. Alexandra accompanied him over all such trips and their romantic life blossomed while they were in Europe. Before returning from Europe, Milgram proposed marriage to Alexandra to which she consented. Milgram decided to marry Alexandra after the completion of his dissertation. He returned back to America in 1960 and submitted his dissertation thesis. His dissertation work was a success and he received his doctorate from Harvard in 1960.[br /]
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At home, the health of Milgram's father and mother was failing. His mother had an attack of paralysis during this time. Milgram took permission to marry Alexandra from his parents and they were wedded in the same year after getting approval from both, his as well as her parents. After marriage, Alexandra joined full-time in Milgram's work assisting him in his experiments.[br /]
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[b]A Partnership Made In Heaven[/b][br /]
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Stanley Milgram, after his marriage with Alexandra joined Princeton to work with Solomon Asch, who was still over there at the time. Milgram joined at the Institute for Advanced study at Princeton where Asch was also continuing with his experiment on conformity. Milgram worked at Princeton for one year with Solomon Asch on the conformity experiments. After the completion of the experiments Milgram published his second article in the American Scientific Journal named Nationality and Conformity in 1961. The article dealt with different experiments made by Solomon Asch and Milgram on conformity. These experiments were being made when urban psychology was still a very little known field.[br /]
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During this time Milgram was offered a term in the position of assistant professor in the psychology department at Yale. Milgram jumped at the chance and took it. At Yale, Milgram wanted to continue his experiments undertaken at Princeton with Professor Solomon Asch. On conformity, Milgram wanted to re-conduct the experiments on group influence and behavior with another more serious medium. At Princeton, Asch and Milgram had conducted the experiment with the use of drawn lines as a medium. Milgram decided to change this to a much more serious medium : Electrical shocks.[br /]
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Milgram's decision to re-conduct the experiments was a turning point in his career. Milgram was intrigued and interested to study the many ethical questions raised by the Holocaust. His major interest was aroused as his own family history was also related to the Holocaust and his parents had to flee Germany in the wake of Nazi oppressions.[br /]
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[b]Merely Orders That Were Followed[/b][br /]
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He wanted to study the justifications for acts of genocide offered by those accused in World War II: The Nuremberg War Criminal Trials. The accused had put up defence by saying that they were merely obeying orders given by their superiors. The whole world was stunned with the happenings in Nazi Germany and their acquired surrounding territories that came out during the Eichmann trials. Adolf Eichmann, a high-ranking official of the Nazi party, was on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The question raised was 'Could it be that Eichmann, and his thousands of accomplices in the Holocaust had just followed orders? Could we call them accomplices? Their defense was always based on 'obedience'; they were just following orders of their superiors. This debate was at the time in all minds. Milgram wanted to search for an explanation on how the atrocities of World War II could have taken place.[br /]
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Milgram answered the call to this problem by conducting a series of studies on obedience to authority. Milgram took permissions to conduct the experiments from the Yale University administration and two grants from the National Science Foundation supported his research. Pilot studies for the experiments got completed in 1861, financed by a grant from the Higgins fund of Yale University. The experiment was based on the principle that a subject would be ordered to give electric shocks as severe punishment to another person by an authority. Despite the apparent discomfort, cries and vehement protests of the victim, the experimenter would instruct the subject to continue stepping up the shock level. His experiment was to know that whether the subject would continue to give shocks to other participant if directed to do so by an authoritative figure.[br /]
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[b]Learning and Punishment[/b][br /]
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The subjects used in the experimental conditions were male adults residing in the greater New Haven area, of New York, aged between 20-50 years, and engaged in a wide variety of occupations. Each experimental condition employed fresh subjects and was carefully balanced for age and occupational types. When they arrived for the experiment they were paid $4.50 for their participation. The experiment was conducted in a laboratory at Yale University. When the research subject arrived at the laboratory, he met an experimenter and a fellow 'research subject'. The experimenter was very confident and about his tone of voice and mannerisms throughout the experiment.[br /]
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The person claiming to be another 'research subject' was actually an accomplice of Milgram's. Unlike the confident experimenter, this person acted a bit nervous. Subjects were told that they are participating in an experiment to understand the relationship between punishment and learning better. As a part of this set-up, they were told that very little scientific research existed on the effects of punishment on human learning. They were also told that no one knew as to how much punishment was best for learning. The study was designed; they were told to determine whether negative reinforcement would encourage learning. One subject would be assigned the role of 'teacher' and another subject would be assigned the role of 'learner'.[br /]
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The teacher would read a series of simple 'word pairs' to the learner. The learner was supposed to memorize the word pair so that, when prompted by the teacher for the first word pair, he could recall the second pair. If the learner responded incorrectly, the teacher was directed to administer an electric shock to the learner as a means of learning reinforcement. Although he pretended to be receiving jolts of electricity as the experiment progressed, no shocks were actually administered to the learner.[br /]
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It appeared to the research subject that the roles of teacher and learner were determined by chance, by drawing slips of paper out of a hat. However this was a part of the set-up. Unknown to the subject, both the slips of paper said 'teacher'. After roles were drawn, the group proceeded to an adjacent room where teachers watched as learners were strapped into a seat which looked some what like an electric chair to 'prevent excessive movement'. An electrode was placed on one arm, using electrode paste, 'to avoid blister's and burns'. The experimenter stated that the shocks might be 'extremely painful' but would cause 'no permanent damage'.[br /]
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The electrode was supposedly attached to a shock generator in an adjourning room. Subjects were told that this ominous looking machine would deliver electric shocks as 'negative reinforcement' for failing to learn. Thirty switches across the machine were marked with different voltage amounts, ranging from 15 volts to 450 volts. The shocks were to begin at the lowest level and increase by 15 volts every time the learner gave an incorrect reply.[br /]
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Although the machine did not administer shocks, it did appear to work. When switches were pressed lights came on. The machine buzzed, the voltage meter registered, and electric relays clicked. A sample shock of 45 volts was given both to the teacher and learner before the experiment began, supposedly to demonstrate the magnitude of the punishment. This shock came from a 45-volt battery wired into the equipment allowing the teacher actually to feel the jolt of 'test' electricity. This procedure combined with the attention to detail and quality of precision engraving that had gone into the production of the 'shock generator,' served to convince the teacher of the authenticity of the bogus apparatus.[br /]
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The teacher read the word pairs to the learner through a microphone from the adjourning room. Learners responded by flipping one of the four switches. When mistakes were made, not only was the teacher to shock the learner, he was also to announce the voltage intensity before doing so. This requirement ensured that subjects were aware of the increasing voltage intensity. Learners deliberately made mistakes, quickly moving the volt amount to higher levels.[br /]
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When the shock level reached 300 volts, learners pounded on the walls in protest. After 315 volts, learners no longer responded to any questions at all. Most of the subjects thought that the experiment was over when the responses ceased. The experimenter however instructed them to treat no response as a wrong answer and to continue to increase the volts. If teacher's hesitated then the experimenter used a series of prods. The prods were made in such a way that the subject would continue to give the shocks. The experiment only concluded after the teacher refused to continue even after the prods. [br /]
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Milgram, his students and his colleagues generally agreed before research began that very few of the teachers would deliver a shock beyond the 300-volt level. He even gathered predictions from psychological researchers and psychiatrists. Most of these experts predicted that the teachers would stop administering shocks at 150 volts. None predicted that the teachers would continue to shock the learner up to the 450-volt level.[br /]
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Milgram's surprising and troubling results showed that these predictions were wrong. No teacher stopped administering shocks before reaching 300 volts and only five stopped then. Nine subjects administered one or more additional shocks in response to the experimenter's prods. Twenty-six of the 40 subjects continued with the experiment administering what they believed to be 450 volts of electricity to the learner. When teachers were asked afterwards to rate how painful the last few shocks were for the learner on a scale of 1 to 14 their average response was 13.42.[br /]
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Over the course of several years, Milgram conducted additional experiments replicating or modifying the conditions of the original experiment. In this variation learners even complained of heart conditions or feigned unconsciousness. What Milgram found, instead of a clear limit of obedience, was that the subject repeatedly obeyed the experimenter. Milgram found that ordinary people would conform to orders by authoritative figures and to group consensus even when the outcome could be severe. The question raised here was that whether the teachers in his experiments were cruel and sadistic in nature and were enjoying administering the shocks? No, they clearly were not enjoying their role. Many expressed increasing nervousness and anxiety, especially as the voltage level increased. Some exhibited nervous laughter, which was considered bizarre and out of place by the experimenter, a few even had seizures of nervous laughter. But the laughter was not from enjoyment. Some were agitated or angry. Several teachers stated that the shocks were stupid or senseless, still they continued.[br /]
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The teachers perspired, trembled, stuttered, bit their lips, groaned, and dug their finger nails into their flesh. When the experimenter declared the experiment was over, the teachers exhibited behavior such as wiping sweat from their forehead, shaking their heads in regret, or reaching for a cigarette.[br /]
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Milgram called the phenomena an agentic state - the subjects became agents of higher, more powerful authority. They were not sadistic or angry people fulfilling their own goals and values. Rather they were relieved of responsibility because they were following orders required by the authoritative figure. This agentic state is easier then being disobedient. Disobedience occurs when the personal beliefs become so pressing and so severe that the effects of following directions outweigh the external pressures to conform.[br /]
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It is important to remember that Milgram's research raised many ethical questions. The research subjects were clearly deceived. Also they were placed under great deal of stress and were troubled by knowing that they had followed orders and administered what they thought were such strong and, painful shocks to innocent protesting participants. For such reasons this study would not be permitted by ethical guidelines today.[br /]
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[b]Obedience - The Feature[/b][br /]
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After the completion of the experiments Milgram decided to make a film on it to provide visual evidence of his incredible findings. He wanted the whole world to view his experiments. At the height of his career, he took courses on filmmaking techniques. After the completion of the course, he produced his first film. It was a gripping black and white documentary named Obedience. It was shot at Yale, the site of the experiments, in May 1962. The film showed in detail the complete works of the experiment and as such it was quite educative about human psychology and tendencies. The film and the experiments created lots of furore in the psychologist community. The experiment itself was highly condemned.[br /]
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[b]Ethics Controversy[/b][br /]
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In the fall of 1962, the American Psychological Association (APA) put Milgram's membership application 'on hold' because of questions raised about the ethics of the 'obedience' research. The American Psychological Association conducted a through investigation about the experiment itself, and after it produced favorable results, they admitted him in the Association. His first article about the obedience experiments appeared in 1963, in the Journal of American Psychological Association.[br /]
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The article got highly criticized by an unusual source. The St Louis Post Dispatch published an editorial criticizing him and Yale on the highly stressful experience he created for these subjects. Milgram found about the editorial from a St Louis social psychologist, Robert Buckhout. As a result, Milgram was able to write a rebuttal that the newspaper subsequently published on its editorial page.[br /]
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[b]Happiness and Sadness[/b][br /]
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In 1963, Milgram again moved back to Harvard. This time as an assistant professor in the department of social relations, the place from which he had started his career as a student of social psychology. His career had risen to great heights and his family life was also good. His career did not have any effect on it; rather he was living happily with his wife. The same year, in which he joined Harvard, their first child was born. The child was a girl and they named her Michelé. Milgram would try to devote equal time to his work and family. During this time, his mother Adele suddenly fell ill with bronchial fever and she passed away. Milgram was broken up by losing his mother.[br /]
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Milgram again took up new experiments to come out of his grief. This time his experiments revolved around patterns of communication in the society. During this time his second article from the 'obedience' experiments was published. The article was called Murder the Heard and was published in the Nation along with another social psychologist called P Hollander. This was a second article from a series of six articles he had written on the 'obedience' experiments.[br /]
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[b]Patterns of Communication[/b][br /]
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His Patterns of Communication experiments at Harvard were a series of different experiments to study the role which communication plays in social psychology. His first experiment on communication was conducted in which he tried to trace back a communicated item back to its original source. He selected five Harvard freshmen as his subjects. A postcard was sent to each of this five. The postcard contained a phone number and stated that funny jokes were available on that number. A few hours after the postcards reached the subjects the phone calls started to come in. And they increased in frequency until the whole telephone line was jammed by calls. After 320 calls had been received, the machinery was so overloaded that it broke down. Still the 320 calls gave enough diffusion data to initiate the second part of the study; to trace the entire pattern of diffusion and see if it could be traced back to the five Harvard freshmen that had received the original postcards.[br /]
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A process was started to locate the people who had heard the joke by interviewing students in the undergraduate dining rooms and by placing an ad in a local newspaper. Students were asked about the person, who had passed them the telephone number and then it was followed up. Through systematic and careful work, the class was able to trace the diffusion network back to the original five freshmen. Thus, on a small scale the diffusion trace back procedure worked well.[br /]
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This experiment was prompted by Milgram's own experience, when he was a student at Harvard in 1954. During that time he used to live in a graduate dormitory at Harvard University. The dormitory rooms did not have private telephones, but there was a pay phone in the hallway. Students used to both make and receive calls at the pay phone. The telephone often rang before a student bestirred himself to walk from his room to answer it, then summoned the person requested by the caller. The problem was that there was no norm or custom prescribing how often to perform this civic chore. When the telephone rang, no one in the dorm knew whom it was for. As a possible solution, Milgram devised a formula. He put up a notice stating that to share the equitable burden of the phone, students should answer the phone two times for each call they received. The message served as a guideline in a situation that was previously without norms. [br /]
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When Milgram returned back from Europe after a couple of years, he found that the one notice he had pasted years back had spread far and wide. The same sorts of notices were found in every dormitory in the campus. This experience had created a sort of curiosity to understand the process and the psychological influence on the subjects in Milgram. But only until later years, was he able to experiment on them, as at that time he was more involved in the 'obedience' experiments.[br /]
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Milgram continued with his communication experiments at Harvard along with his students. He continued working for Harvard until 1967. When Harvard did not offer him tenure, Milgram accepted a position of a full professor at the Graduate center of the City University of New York (CUNY) by passing the associate professor level. During this time, a second child was born to the Milgrams. This time it was a son whom they named Marc.[br /]
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[b]Unpredictable Temperament[/b][br /]
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At CUNY, Milgram taught doctoral students in small classes, sometimes having as few as three students, and was 'unusually conscientious' in providing feed back. Milgram was able to capture students' interest so much so that they continued their discussions for long hours even after the time ended. Former students reported that Milgram had a very interactive classroom style. They alternated between fearing he would call on them and competing for his approval in discussions. A former student describes Milgram as a professor who could be hard but also warm and humorous, and reports that one "special joyous day, he replaced his speech with song for the entire day, and refused to listen to any one unless they too sang their words to him."[br /]
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[b]Mentor For Life[/b][br /]
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Once Milgram became a student's mentor, he or she had a life-long advocate. Milgram transmitted his enthusiasm for studying human behavior to his students. He used his courses to examine his past research asking students to challenge and re-design his work. Milgram also incorporated students' work into his own writings and, although he rarely co-authored research with his teaching colleagues, he frequently co-authored research publications with his students.[br /]
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Milgram also used ideas from his family members and students to design research projects. Once his mother-in-law commented about people not giving up their bus or subway seats to older women, which led to another project, in which his students asked strangers to give up their seats. Initially the students were frightened by the project, but one brave student took up the challenge. The experiment showed the enormous inhibitory anxiety that ordinarily prevents us from breaching social norms. The anxiety forms a powerful barrier that must be surmounted before asking for a seat on the subway. Slowly as the project moved forward, other students gradually got interested and started taking part in the experiment. Although asking strangers for subway seats proved very stressful, students still completed the task. Afterwards, the class spent an extensive amount of time evaluating the questions such as why they had continued working on the project as directed even though it made them so uncomfortable. Once he made his students spend an entire class period having them rearrange tables, which they did without question. Milgram devised many such small experiments to give an in-depth look into the human psychology.[br /]
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In 1969, Milgram's third article out of the series of six appeared in the science journal. The article was named Experience of Living in Cities. This article was published in the Science Journal and dealt in-depth with the experiments on "the urban bystander" and "the idea of neighborhood" etc… These experiments were based to study the social and moral involvement of individuals and their social responsibility as the citizen's of the city. This experiment was prompted when once Milgram was on a trip in a rural locality. When he entered a stationery store, the clerk at the counter beamed a broad smile at him, which immediately prompted Milgram to believe that they were acquaintances. Milgram rummaged in his mind for the person's name, but finally apologized that he had forgotten it. The situation rapidly deteriorated into general confusion, since the clerk was perplexed by his apology. He was not able to understand that why Milgram had assumed that they knew each other. The misunderstanding had aroused because in the urban milieu in which we live, people do not smile at one another unless they are acquainted. For the rural clerk it was natural to smile at everyone, even at a stranger.[br /]
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[b]The Rural and Urban Difference[/b][br /]
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Milgram decided to study the rural-urban differences in the mental makeup of the individuals. Along with his students he devised a simple method to study this. They decided that students would approach people with open hands for a handshake at the streets, public gardens and other places. Thirteen student experimenters went into the streets of mid-town New York city, hands out stretched, then into small towns in New Jersey, Long Island, and Westchester County, forever extending their hands. The result showed a highly significant difference in the readiness of town and city dwellers to reciprocate the gesture. This clearly showed the shaping of the psychological attitude of people residing in the urban areas and the rural areas.[br /]
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Another experiment worth remarking conducted in the same series was 'the Idea of Neighborhood'. This experiment essentially dealt with people's psychology to different areas of the city in which they were residing. A neighborhood label, once affixed, has real consequences. For outsiders it reduces decision-making to more manageable terms. Instead of dealing with the more variegated reality of numerous city streets, the resident can form a set of attitudes about a limited number of social categories and act accordingly. Thus a mother will instruct her child to stay out of Harlem, or judge that a boy who lives in Riverdale is probably acceptable for her daughter. Newcomers may be attracted or repelled by areas defined with a high or a low prestige label. For those who live within it, the neighborhood defines areas relatively free of intruders, identifies where potential friends are to be found or where they are to be cultivated, minimizes the prospects of status insult, and simplifies innumerable daily decisions dealing with spatial activities. Thus, the mental map of neighborhoods is not superfluous cognitive baggage, but performs important Psychological and Social functions. This experiment was the first of its kind undertaken by anyone and was highly appreciated by other psychologists.[br /]
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Milgram's fourth article from the 'Obedience Series' appeared in 1970. This article was an intricate part of the obedience experiments and it dealt extensively with the human psychology towards 'Obedience'. The article was named "If Hitler asked you to electrocute a stranger, would you ?" It appeared in the Esquire Magazine in the month of February. While his fifth article from the same series also appeared in the same year. It was named "Would you obey a Hitler ?" and appeared in the Science Digest in May month of the same year.[br /]
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[b]The Psychological Map[/b][br /]
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During this time, Milgram was offered to take up a research project of studying Psychological Maps of cities as in the mind of the subjects. The main purpose was to study that how individuals used mental maps in everyday life to locate themselves in the environment and navigate from one point to another. Milgram decided to conduct the research itself in New York City. His main goal, then, was to make a precise assessment of just which parts of New York City were easily recognizable and which were difficult.[br /]
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The research was undertaken with the help of New York magazine and its executive editor Sheldon Zalaznick. Over a thousand volunteers from different neighborhoods of New York City were selected for the purpose. Milgram then took photographs of different landmarks of the city. These photographs were then shown to the participants, and they were asked to recognize the different landmarks. They were also asked to identify the neighborhood of the landmark, and beyond that the precise street on which the landmark was located. Milgram found that people could only recognize an area when they were exposed to it. Moreover the architectural or social distinctiveness of the area played an important role. Milgram's research showed the psychological impact of different areas on the mind of individuals.[br /]
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[b]The Family As A Team[/b][br /]
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Milgram's study of New York City continued till 1972 when he received a Guggenheim fellowship that permitted him to travel to Paris to extend the work on psychological representation. Milgram traveled with his family to France. His elder daughter was then nine years old and younger son was five years old. Milgram stayed in Paris for a year to conduct research on "The Psychological Maps of Paris." In this research Milgram had the co-operation of Professor Serge Moscovici, Director of the Laboratory of Social Psychology and the expert collaboration of Mme Denise Jodelet. Milgram felt an acute shortage of funds to support his research. Also it was more difficult to obtain French subjects then the Americans, as the selection conformed to rigid constraints of sampling. Milgram's family helped him a lot during this time, his children used to paste stamps on envelopes, while his wife typed names and addresses from French phone books. The environment was converted into a virtual cottage industry, as the French citizens were not responding to his call.[br /]
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Later on a useful surprise came to him as the French government gave the project a grant of 35,000 francs and permitted him to employ a French survey organization to reach incomplete cells of sample, particularly among lower-class Parisians. The project showed a detailed Psychological map generated by its inhabitants, detailed representation of the city expressed in Cartographic form, rather than simple opinions, attitudes and words. Such mental maps allow understanding the city's spatial character in a way that words frequently avoid. They show how urban space is encoded, distorted, and selectively represented, while yet retaining its usefulness to the person. For the image of the city is not just extra mental baggage; it is the necessary accompaniment to living in a complex and highly variegated environment.[br /]
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Milgram returned back from Paris in 1973 after completing his research on Psychological Mapping of Paris. During his time he was still continuing as a Professor at CUNY. His last article on 'Obedience' was published. The article was named "Perils of Obedience" and it dealt with the variations of the 'Obedience' experiments conducted by him in 1963. After returning to New York Milgram did a comparative study of the Mental Maps of New York and that of Paris. Milgram was also working during this time on a book on 'Obedience' which would get published in the later coming years.[br /]
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[b]Failing Health[/b][br /]
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During this time Milgram's health was not keeping well. He had started facing health problems right from the time he was in Paris. He faced his first heart attack and his left artery was half blocked. He was hospitalized for a couple of months and then prescribed to bed rest. He took a break from his work for a period of six months, though during this time he still continued guiding his students with their work. He even devised many other small experiments, which were undertaken by his students.[br /]
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Milgram returned to his work at CUNY after a prolonged illness in the beginning of 1974. He returned with a new vigor to his work to accept new challenges. During this time Milgram came across a graduate student in his PhD program in Social Psychology named Harry From. Harry had training and experience as a film director in Romania and Israel before coming to the US. Milgram was highly impressed with Harry's performance. During his illness Milgram had conceived a project to make a series of educational films on his different experiments. When Milgram met Harry, and after coming to know about his past track record, he decided to make the series of films with Harry. All the films were shot at different locations in New York City and its different campuses.[br /]
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[b]Creating A Lasting Impact[/b][br /]
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Their first joint venture was The City And The Self, a film about the impact of city life on human behavior. The movie was awarded the Silver Medal of the International film and Television festival held at New York. This was followed by a series of four films about social psychology up to 1976. The films were Invitation to Social Psychology, a film hinting on what social psychology was all about; Conformity and Independence a film on variations of the obedience experiments; Human Aggressions a film showing the darker side of the Human Mentality; and Non-Verbal Communications a film showing diffusion patterns of mass communications. All the films were based on Human tendencies in the society and its different impacts in shaping up of the society.
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The films won high appreciation from his fellow colleagues and psychologists. All of his films can still be availed from the Penn State University Media Sales Services.[br /]
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[b]A Significant Work[/b][br /]
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Milgram completed working on his book in 1974 and got it published in the same year. The Book Obedience to Authority : An Experimental View was based on his research studies which he had started in 1961. His original experiment was completed in 1963 itself, but he continued with different variations of the same experiments. The book contained a detailed study of his 'Obedience' research, which was started to study the reasons for the Holocaust. The book let to his worldwide fame. He was awarded the annual social psychology award by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for his life's work, but mostly for his work with obedience.[br /]
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Milgram got nominated for a National Book Award in 1975, for Obedience to Authority : An Experimental View, which by that time had been translated into seven languages for international distribution. He also got appointed as the Distinguished Professor of psychology at CUNY.[br /]
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Milgram received a grant from the CBC network to study the relationship between violence on television and viewer aggressions. This feat made him "The first and only researcher who was able to get a major TV network to create segments of an ongoing popular prime-time program tailored to meet the needs of an experiment." Milgram worked with the producers of the drama Medical Center, creating segments with different anti-social or pro-social endings. He was then able to examine whether those who had seen anti-social endings were more likely than others to engage in anti social acts. For the purpose he conducted surveys and looked up the crime map of the city. He even went to the extent of finding the reasons of the crimes and relates it to the serials. His findings were very astonishing as they showed how deeply the mentality of individuals was affected by viewing television. [br /]
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In August 1976, CBS Network presented a prime time dramatization of the obedience experiments and the events surrounding them, titled The Tenth Level. William Shatner had the starring role as Stephen Hunter, the Milgram-like scientist. Milgram served as consultant for the film. While it contained lots of fictional elements, it powerfully conveyed enough of the essence of the true story for its writer, George Bellak, to receive Honorable Mention in the American Psychological Association's media awards for 1977.[br /]
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Milgram continued working as an experimenter as well as a professor at CUNY. Milgram's mentoring style was to be supportive of his student's interest rather than impose his own research interests on them. Although he chaired the largest number of Ph.D. thesis in the Psychology department only one of them was an obedient experiment. A 'role-played' version conducted by Daniel Geller in 1975, using Milgram's machine.[br /]
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Milgram's "Shock Machine" still exists. It can be found in the Archives of the History of American Psychology, at the University of Akron. For a number of years, beginning in 1992, it was a part of a travelling psychology exhibit created by the American Psychology Association.[br /]
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[b]Man of Varied Interests[/b][br /]
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Milgram had many interests outside of academics. As mentioned before, as an undergraduate he had spent a summer studying French at the Sorbonne in Paris, and taking a motorbike trip from France to Spain, then to Italy. Throughout his life, he continued to enjoy travelling with his family. Milgram considered himself to be a 'news addict' and was very much interested in new scientific developments and the scientists making the breakthroughs. He wrote librettos for musicals and children's stories. He designed board games, including one on the art world and another on tenure. He was an inventor with a notebook of ideas including one for a machine to rewind electric typewriter ribbons. As he thought that the one-time use ribbons were wasteful. Additionally, he was a collector of contemporary Japanese wood block prints and works of contemporary Argentine painters.[br /]
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Milgram proved to be a good father and husband to his children and wife. His last article was published in the month of October in 1984 in a journal named Omni and it was called Network Love. It represented the psychological aspect of the network of love in relationships of individuals with each other. Milgram also got involved in an experiment to locate lost letters during this time.[br /]
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[b]A Soul Departed[/b][br /]
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Stanley Milgram left for his heavenly abode on December 20, 1984, after a massive heart attack, his fifth. He was then a 51-year-old, active professor until the end. It came as a shock and a huge loss of such an entity to the world community.[br /]
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Stanley Milgram is survived by his wife and his two children residing in New York City. He will forever be remembered by the World Community for his work on the obedience experiments and the impact it created. Stanley Milgram really was an enigma of his time.[br /]
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