Behind the Shock Machine

The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments

By: Gina Perry

Narrated by: Jennifer Vuletic

When social psychologist Stanley Milgram invited volunteers to take part in an experiment at Yale in the summer of 1961, none of the participants could have foreseen the worldwide sensation that the published results would cause.

Milgram reported that fully 65 percent of the volunteers had repeatedly administered electric shocks of increasing strength to a man they believed to be in severe pain, even suffering a life-threatening heart condition, simply because an authority figure had told them to do so. Such behaviour was linked to atrocities committed by ordinary people under the Nazi regime and immediately gripped the public imagination.

The experiments remain a source of controversy and fascination more than 50 years later. In Behind the Shock Machine, psychologist and author Gina Perry unearths for the first time the full story of this controversial experiment and its startling repercussions. Interviewing the original participants - many of whom remain haunted to this day about what they did - and delving deep into Milgram’s personal archive, she pieces together a more complex picture and much more troubling picture of these experiments than was originally presented by Milgram.

Uncovering the details of the experiments leads her to question the validity of that 65 percent statistic and the claims that it revealed something essential about human nature. Fleshed out with dramatic transcripts of the tests themselves, the book puts a human face on the unwitting people who faced the moral test of the shock machine and offers a gripping, unforgettable tale of one man’s ambition and an experiment that defined a generation.

©2012 Gina Perry (P)2018 Audible, Ltd

Why is it Milgram's Fault?

Good story so a good review from me. It was nice getting more information about these experiments. But it bothers me that all these people treated Milgram like he did something wrong. It's not like those people had a gun to their heads! They thought they were actually hurting someone & still kept going when they could've refused & just left anytime! People would always rather blame someone else. I guess they were afraid that they wouldn't be allowed to keep their money. I agree that this experiment was unorthodox in some ways, but that's no excuse.

Incredible look at Milgram, but . . .

. . . the author harbors a permeating bias that causes a pervasive undercurrent of demonization of Milgram, his work, his character, and his conclusions. I'm all for unbiased analysis, but this went far beyond that. It is a hit job. It's also an extended opinion piece masquerading as a serious consideration of Milgram. Full of conjecture, non-sequiturs and unsupported conclusions, it's little more than gas-lighting. Nonetheless, if you have a strong sense of facts and can be on constant alert for the misleading, then the book contains just enough factual and historical tidbits that can be strung together to form a reasonable understanding of the man, the experiment, and the latter's meaning for society. In other words, if you can resist the undue influence of the author, then you, like the teacher subjects in the Milgram experiments, can form your own conclusions.