Experimenter Page #7

Marc was born in 1967.

He hardly remembers Cambridge.

Even, or especially when nothing

decisive is happening,

time refuses to stand still.

I walk to the station every morning,

take the train into the city.

I enjoy the routine.

Today's assignment.

Get on a local bus,

and then with the bus in motion

and loud enough

to be heard by your fellow

passengers,

sing your favorite song.

Any song we want?

Just as long as you know the

words and can sing them loud

and clear. Pair up. Non-singer

takes notes, then switch roles.

You may say, "So what? Singing

a song, anyone can do that."

Or, "I don't have to do that,

I'm an individual, not a conformist."

Or, "This is silly, it doesn't change

the world to sing a song."

get on the bus and sing.

Now go, right now. Come on.

No humming.

My next guest is

professor of psychology

at the Graduate Center,

the City University in New York.

He's written a fascinating book,

a disturbing book.

An Experimental View,

just published by Harper & Row.

Please welcome a very creative,

very controversial

socio-psychologist,

Stanley Milgram.

Doctor. Dr. Milgram.

So your subjects, they thought

the shocks were real,

that they were

delivering 450 volts,

- Sixty five percent of them.

- Mm.

But they were not particularly

aggressive or sadistic people.

They were a representative

cross-section of the average

American citizen living within

range of Yale University.

I thought, yes, we'd do

the experiment in New Haven,

and there'd be very limited

obedience,

and then we'd recreate

the experiment in, say, Berlin,

and find the rate of obedience

to be much higher.

Saved a bit on airfare,

didn't you?

So, let me get this straight.

You did the experiment

in the early '60s?

And here we are, 1974,

and your book still feels like news.

Why is that?

People don't have the resources

to resist authority.

That's what the experiment

teaches us.

But people don't wanna hear it.

The experiment explains

a kind of...

flaw in social thinking,

a deadening,

a suspension of moral value.

What would you

say to your critics,

critics who would insist

the moral lapse is yours?

One of them cites "the extremely

callous, deceitful way

the experiments were carried out."

Another calls them

"morally repugnant, vile."

"Milgram belongs on the

other end of the shock machine."

There certainly is a certain

kind of Kafkaesque quality

- to the experiments.

- Kafkaesque?

The experiment taught me

something about the, uh,

plasticity of human nature.

Not the evil, not the aggressiveness,

but a certain kind of malleability.

Sixty-five percent of volunteers

were obedient.

That left 35 percent who

recognized a moral breach,

took responsibility for

their actions and resisted.

There is no permanent tissue damage.

That's your opinion.

If he doesn't want to continue,

I'm taking orders from him.

The experiment requires you continue.

You have no other choice.

If this were Russia maybe,

but not in America.

But obedience,

compliance, was more common.

You tell yourself, "I wouldn't

do that. I'd never do that."

But then, what did Montaigne

say?

"We are double in ourselves.

What we believe we disbelieve,

and we cannot rid ourselves of

what we condemn."

Another one of my experiments.

Hank, a CUNY grad student,

was the designated

"crowd crystal" staring up

at a fixed point in space,

looking up at a

non-existent something.

As you multiply the confederates,

the people who stare up because

we've recruited them to stare up,

the number of people who

actually stop and look

increases exponentially.

Meanwhile, Obedience to Authority

gets translated into

eight languages and nominated

for a national book award.

October 24th, 1974, 4:25pm.

Sheila Jarcho, J-A-R...

I know how to spell it,

Stanley.

...C-H-O, working on the mental

maps project, comes in

and tells me errors were made in

the neighborhood map,

already duplicated in some

500 copies.

Her facial expression captures

the attitude that she's shown

all along in her capacity as

research assistant.

Are my eyes

really that close together?

On the whole, both men and women

are highly critical

when studying photographs of

themselves.

The vanity factor's

extraordinary

when people judge

their own image.

Do you ever worry that

everything's sort of

an anti-climax since

the obedience experiments,

and that your work,

really everything you're doing,

is just a flash in the pan?

The truth is, you're invested in

the idea of authority

and you love lording it over

all of us.

Me, the other students,

and even your wife.

- Me?

- Well, f*** yeah.

I work here because I get paid for it

and I actually think

it's kind of fun.

Sheila, what's wrong with you?

Huh. Just keep doing

what he tells you to do.

I don't get along

with all my students.

The flash in the pan?

How many people can manage

even that flash?

I've done some psych

experiments,

but in my mind I'm still about

to write my great Broadway musical.

4:
27 pm. Paul Hollander,

looking tan and fit,

pays a visit from Massachusetts.

Tan and fit and miserable.

I am so sorry, Paul.

Well, another marriage

down the drain.

- I should've seen it coming.

- It's terrible, rotten.

But you look good.

The worst of it is she's

erected a Berlin Wall

- between me and my daughter.

- Oh.

- Nice place you've got here.

- It isn't Harvard, but, thank you.

Harvard would never have given

you an office half as grand

as this, or found you

as bewitching a secretary.

Oh. Well, I just go

where the work is.

So, aren't you

going to take my picture, then?

I'm considering it.

Do you ever feel invincible one

moment and then worthless the next?

Yes and no.

The camera begins to attract

its own subject matter.

It's no longer a passive recorder

but actively attracts

the people it records.

Uh, Stanley Milgram?

How did I get to be so old?

What is the Kierkegaard quote?

"Life can always be...

Only be understood backward."

October 24th, 1974, 4:29 pm.

Conversation with Paul Hollander

interrupted by the arrival of

a messenger bearing, at last,

the German edition of

Obedience to Authority.

With crass barbed wire

cover design.

Mein Gott.

- What's your name?

- Thomas Shine.

Mind participating in

my experiment?

It depends.

He just wants to take your picture.

Everybody's doing it.

- Okay. I need a signature.

- Oh, yes.

He's interested in

the unacknowledged power

of photographic images.

Okay.

"Life can only be understood

backwards,

but has to be lived forwards."

Around this time,

I was also working on

The Familiar Stranger.

We take photographs of commuters

on a train platform.

Each figure in the photographs

are given a number.

The photos are duplicated,

and a week later

the students follow up.

Hello. I'm a student at CUNY.

Would you mind filling out

this questionnaire?

- Okay.

- Also,

do you recognize

any of these people?

No.

- What about here?

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