Make It into a Museum:
More on Milgram's Obedience to Authority

January 9, 2007

One of the most effective strategies of Obedience to Authority is the use of brief portraits of real people. Two chapters are entitled "Individuals Confront Authority". In them the physical characteristics of individuals are sketched and we get snippets of transcribed dialogue or citations of written responses. To my mind these portraits have a novelistic feel.. I mean, imagine the situation of Milgram.. he has hundreds of subjects and for each subject a lengthy videotape of the experiment and concluding interview. Out of that mountain of material important characters must be identified and a few "telling details" selected to be presented to the reader. I would argue that this process of selecting information is akin to the work of a novelist.. it took a good ear for dialogue and character to construct these portraits.

In the first chapter entitled "Individuals Confront Authority" a man named Morris Braverman is described. He is a social worker:

He appears intelligent and concerned. The impression he creates is that of enormous overcontrol, that of a repressed and serious man, whose finely modulated voice is not linked with his emotional life. [52]

In the process of raising the shock levels Morris commences laughing. The notes made by the experimenter are the following: "Almost breaking up now each time gives shock. Rubbing face to hide laughter" (53). In the midst of this laughter he proves willing to administer the shocks all the way to the maximum. Then in the concluding interview the man is sedate, calm.. able to analyze what happened. It is the kind of character we might otherwise have to look to Dostoyevsky to find.. but here he is in America in the 60s!

Morris gets even more interesting when we discover at the end of this brief portrait his reflections in a questionnaire a year later:

What appalled me was that I could possess this capacity for obedience and compliance to a central idea, i.e. the value of a memory experiment even after it became clear that continued adherence to this value was at the expense of violation of another value... As my wife said, 'You can call yourself Eichmann.' I hope I can deal more effectively with any future conflicts of values I encounter. [54]

What is more important to a novelist than character growth? And there it is.. Clearly some new level of consciousness has been reached.

That response triggered for me memories of my experience at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. The goal of the museum was not to simply present information, but to prod the visitor confront values choices. I remember thinking: "What would I do in this case?" Here is the official website's description of one exhibit:

The Point of View Diner A recreation of a 1950's diner, red booths and all, that "serves" a menu of controversial topics on video jukeboxes. It uses the latest cutting edge technology to relay the overall message of personal responsibility. Following scenarios focusing on drunk driving and hate speech, this interactive exhibit allows visitors to input their opinions on what they have seen and question relevant characters. The results are then instantly tabulated.

Now, granted nobody is going to be fooled into thinking they are actually back in time confronting racial segregation.. but the goal of feeding people loaded situations and asking them how they might respond is interesting. One could even imagine using the experiment by Milgram as a scenario: "Suppose you responded to an advertisement to be part of an experiment on memory and learning.. and you were asked to administer shocks that ascended in strength..?"

Would anything be gained by sitting there and pondering this situation? Granted, it will not be as powerful an emotional experience as the one that Milgram's participants actually went through.. but it is still something. The goal of these scenarios—according to the museum—is give the "overall message of personal responsibility". Milgram too notes the importance of "responsibility" in the actions of various people. People see themselves as the agents of another person.. and therefore not responsible. Yet here is a museum filled with exhibits geared precisely to increase that feeling of personal responsibility in the midst of social situations. Reading about Milgram's experiment gave me a new appreciation for the Museum of Tolerance and its efforts in this direction.. Any experience that might get ordinary people to acknowledge themselves as a possible Eichmann is worth trying to replicate in some fashion or other..