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Acknowledgments
The experiments described here emerge from a seventy-five-year
tradition of experimentation in
social psychology. Boris Sidis carried out an experiment on obedience in
1898, and the studies of
Asch, Lewin, Sherif, Frank, Block, Cartwright, French, Raven, Luchins,
Lippitt, and White, among
many others, have informed my work even when they are not specifically
discussed. The contributions
of Adorno and associates and of Arendt, Fromm, and Weber are part of the
zeitgeist in which social scientists grow up. Three works have
especially interested me. The first is the insightful Authority and
Delinquency in the Modern State, by Alex Comfort; a lucid conceptual
analysis of authority was written
by Robert Bierstedt; and Arthur Koestler’s The Ghost in the Machine
developed the idea of social
hierarchy in greater depth than the present book.
The experimental research was carried out and completed while I was in
the Department of Psychology
at Yale University, 1962-63. And I am grateful to the department for
helping me with research facilities
and good advice. In particular I would like to thank Professor Irving L.
Janis.
The late James McDonough of West Haven, Connecticut, played the part of
the learner, and the study
benefited from his unerring natural talents. John Williams of Southbury,
Connecticut, served as
experimenter and performed an exacting role with precision. My thanks
also to Alan Elms, Jon Wayland,
Taketo Muata, Emil Elges, James Miller, and J. Michael Boss for work
done in connection with the
research.
I owe a profound debt to the many people
in New Haven and Bridgeport who served as subjects.
Thinking and writing about the
experiments went on long after they had been conducted, and many
individuals provided needed stimulation and support. Among them
were Drs. Andre Modigliani, Aaron Hershkowitz, Rhea Mendoza Diamond, and
the late Gordon W. Allport. Also, Drs. Roger Brown, Harry
Kaufmann, Howard Leventhal, Nijole Kudirka, David Rosenhan, Leon Mann,
Paul Hollander, Jerome Bruner, and Mr. Maury Silver. Eloise Segal
helped me get several chapters under way, and Virginia Hilu, my editor
at Harper & Row, displayed remarkable faith in the book and in the end
lent me her office and rescued the book from a reluctant author.
At the City University of New York,
thanks are due to Mary Englander and Eileen Lydall, who served as
secretaries, and to Wendy Sternberg and Katheryn Krogh, research
assistants.
Judith Waters, a graduate student and
skilled artist, executed the line drawings in Chapters 8 and 9.
I wish to thank the Institute of Jewish
Affairs, London, for permission to quote at length from my article
"Obedience to Criminal Orders: The Compulsion to Do Evil," which
first appeared in its magazine, Patterns of Prejudice.
Thanks also to the American Psychological
Association for permission to quote at length several of my articles
which first appeared in its publications, namely, "Behavioral Study of
Obedience," "Issues in the Study of Obedience: A Reply to Baumrind,"
"Group Pressure and Action Against a Person," and "Liberating Effects of
Group Pressure."
The research was supported by two grants from the National Science
Foundation. Exploratory
studies carried out in 1960 were aided by a small grant from the Higgins
Fund of Yale University. A
Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972-73 gave me a year in Paris, away from
academic duties, that allowed me
to complete the book.
My wife, Sasha, has been with these experiments from the start. Her
abiding insight and understanding
counted a great deal. In the final months it came down to just the two
of us, working in our apartment on
the Rue de Remusat -- jointly dedicated to a task that is now, with Sasha’s
sympathetic help, complete.
Stanley Milgram
Paris
April 2, 1973
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