Behind the Shock Machine (Gina Perry, Scribe)

In 1961, Stanley Milgram, an ambitious 27-year-old associate professor of psychology at Yale University, conducted a series of controversial experiments designed to test the limits of obedience. He recruited over 800 volunteers and in the experiment the subjects were told to give electric shocks to a person they could hear screaming in pain in the room next door. Milgram’s experiments were set against a backdrop of cultural and political anxieties including the Eichmann trial (the first televised trial in America), the Cold War and the contemporary fear of America’s moral weakness after the capture and supposed brainwashing of American soldiers during the Korean War. Milgram’s results tapped into the zeitgeist of American fear at this time—they suggested that the average American could potentially become a torturer and that, in the face of authority, the human conscience is frail and malleable. Australian psychologist Gina Perry has meticulously researched Milgram and his controversial experiment, having been granted access to all 158 boxes of archival materials. She interviews Milgram’s wife, volunteers and staff who took part in these now infamous experiments and unpacks their moral implications, ethical issues and long-reaching effects, as well as the impact on social psychology studies. This book should appeal to readers interested in psychology and human behaviour.

Sarina Gale is a freelance writer and bookseller at the Sun Bookshop in Yarraville

Tags: nonfiction

Category: Reviews