Tag Archives: Gina Perry

The Lost Boys: Inside Muzafer Sherif’s Robbers Cave experiment Gina Perry

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A new book from Gina Perry on the classic Robbers Cave study is forthcoming from Scribe. The Lost Boys: Inside Muzafer Sherif’s Robbers Cave Experiment is described as follows:

In 1954, a group of boys attended a remote summer camp where they were split into two groups, and encouraged to bully, harass, and demonise each other. The results would make history as one of social psychology’s classic — and most controversial — studies: the Robbers Cave experiment.

Conducted at the height of the Cold War, the experiment officially had a happy ending: the boys reconciled, and psychologist Muzafer Sherif demonstrated that while hatred and violence are powerful forces, so too are cooperation and harmony. Today it is proffered as proof that under the right conditions warring groups can make peace. Yet the true story of the experiments is far more complex, and more chilling.

In The Lost Boys, Gina Perry explores the experiment and its consequences, tracing the story of Sherif, a troubled outsider who struggled to craft an experiment that would vanquish his personal demons. Drawing on archival material and new interviews, Perry pieces together a story of drama, mutiny, and intrigue that has never been told before.

FHHS Sponsored Session: “Human Science Fictionalized: A Novel, a Visual Narrative and an Indie Film”

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This November’s History of Science Society (HSS) meeting features a session sponsored by HSS’s special interest group the Forum for History of Human Science (FHHS). The HSS meeting runs November 3rd through 6th in Atlanta, Georgia. The session “Human Science Fictionalized: A Novel, a Visual Narrative and an Indie Film,” organized by Ben Harris (right), will take place on the morning of Sunday November 6th. Full details follow below.

Sunday Nov. 6, 9-11 am
Session 87. Human Science Fictionalized: A Novel, a Visual Narrative and an Indie Film
Chair(s): John Carson, University of Michigan
Commentator(s): Nadine Weidman, Harvard University
Organizer(s): Ben Harris, University of New Hampshire

A Novelist’s Perspective, Andromeda Romano-Lax, Independent Scholar
An Artist’s Perspective, Matteo Farinella, Independent Scholar and Columbia University
Putting Stanley Milgram on Film, Gina Perry, University of Melbourne

Summary:

In studies of science popularization the focus is usually on non-fiction. But what about fictionalized portraits of science? This session looks at three attempts to bring the human and neuro- sciences to the public through fiction. Among the questions explored are: how is the fact/fiction boundary negotiated? how do a “fact writer” and a “fiction writer” think about popularization differently? What are the different relationships that they have to their sources, or that they envision with their audiences? Andromeda Romano-Lax is a successful novelist whose most recent work, Behave (2016), dramatizes the life and career of Rosalie Rayner, wife and former student of behaviorist John Watson. Matteo Farinella is an illustrator and artist with a doctorate in neuroscience. His visual narrative, Neurocomic (2013, co-authored with Hana Roz), portrays the history of neuroscience through a young man’s a voyage of discovery in a land of giant neurons and encounters with famous scientists. Gina Perry is an Australian journalist who used her investigative and narrative skills to write a Behind the Shock Machine (2013), a history of Stanley Milgram’s obedience studies. Now a doctoral student in psychology, she will review Experimenter, Michael Almereyda’s 2016 film about Milgram and his work. Our commentator is Nadine Weidman, a historian of science at Harvard University known for her work on public controversy and popularization in the twentieth century human sciences. Our Chair is John Carson, a historian at the University of Michigan and Director of Undergraduate Studies for its Program in Science, Technology, and Society.

Come back tomorrow for a roundup of all the history of human science related programming at HSS!

Obedience to Authority Conference Program Now Online

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The full program for this summer’s Obedience to Authority Conference is now online. Fifty years after Stanley Milgram’s now infamous shock experiments, the conference looks back at the impact these studies have had on the discipline and in broader society. Among the stellar list of conference participants are a number of individuals who are undoubtedly familiar to AHP readers: Hank Stam, Jill Morawski, Ian Nicholson, Gina Perry, Thomas Blass, Herbert Kelman, and many more. The Obedience to Authority Conference: Milgram’s Experiments 50 Years On takes place August 6-8th, 2013 in Bracebridge, Ontario. The full program can be found here.

Inside Robbers Cave on ABC Radio

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Gina Perry, author of Beyond the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments, has a new project that looks at the Sherif’s Robber’s Cave experiment. Perry has just produced an episode for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National’s show Hindsight on this famous psychological study of group relations. The program features interviews with some of the boys who participated in the experiment and audio recorded as part of the study, as well as interviews with historians of psychology David Baker, of the Center for the History of Psychology, and Hank Stam, of the University of Calgary. As described on the program’s website,

In 1954 at a small national park in rural Oklahoma, Turkish-American psychologist Muzafer Sherif brought two groups of 11-year-old boys to a summer camp. The boys, from Oklahoma city, arrived at the camp excited at the prospect of three weeks outdoors. What they didn’t know and what they were never told was that their behaviour over the next three weeks would be studied, analysed, discussed and used in theories about war, interracial conflict and prejudice for generations to come.

Almost 60 years since it was conducted, it’s still cited in psychology textbooks today. But what’s less well known is that the Robbers Cave was Sherif’s third attempt to generate peace between warring groups. The earlier studies were the 1949 ‘Happy Valley Camp’ study in Connecticut, and the second was his 1953 ‘Camp Talualac’ study.

‘Inside the Robbers Cave’ tells the story of two of the three studies. Producer Gina Perry’s research unearths a tale of drama, failure, mutiny and intrigue that has been overlooked in official accounts of Sherif’s research.

The program features original archival audio from recordings made during 1953 and 1954.

The program Inside Robbers Cave can be heard online here. Perry also discusses her research for the project on her blog here.

Obedience to Authority Conference, August 2013

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Fifty years after the results of Stanley Milgram’s (above) obedience to authority experiments first appeared in print, a conference on his controversial work is scheduled to take place. The 2013 Obedience to Authority Conference will take place August 6th to 8th in Bracebridge, Ontario in the Muskoka district north of Toronto. As the conference website describes, this event

came about as a result of a conversation at the 2012 Cheiron conference. After a panel discussion on Milgram’s obedience research, the four panellists – Nestar Russell, Gina Perry, Dr Stephen Gibson and Dr Ian Nicholson – agreed that a conference on the topic was long overdue.

The Call for Papers for the Obedience to Authority Conference follows below.

The 2013 Obedience to Authority conference invites proposals for papers that explore and investigate the implications and applications of Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments in the following areas:

Ethics
Gender and power
Historical analysis
Methodology
Paradigms of power
Replications and representations
Value and meaning

Submissions are due May 15, 2013 and can be submitted here.

New Book: Behind the Shock Machine

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The ongoing saga of Stanley Milgram’s obedience to authority experiments now includes yet another chapter. Gina Perry has just released a book, Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments, in which she explores the studies in detail. Perry has previously discussed Milgram’s work and interviewed participants in the obedience to authority experiments on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio Eye program in an episode titled, Beyond the Shock Machine. (Discussed previously on AHP here.) It is these interviews with the participants of this now infamous study, which is undoubtedly the most unique and provacative aspect of Perry’s work.

Behind the Shock Machine is described on the publisher’s website as follows,

In the summer of 1961, a group of men and women volunteered for a memory experiment to be conducted by young, dynamic psychologist Stanley Milgram. None could have imagined that, once seated in the lab, they would be placed in front of a box known as a shock machine and asked to administer a series of electric shocks to a man they’d just met. And no one could have foreseen how the repercussions of their actions, made under pressure and duress, would reverberate throughout their lives. For what the volunteers did not know was that the man was an actor, the shocks were fake, and what was really being tested was just how far they would go.

When Milgram’s results were released, they created a worldwide sensation. He reported that people had repeatedly shocked a man they believed to be in pain, even dying, because they had been told to — he linked the finding to Nazi behaviour during the Holocaust. But some questioned Milgram’s unethical methods in fooling people. Milgram became both hero and villain, and his work seized the public imagination for more than half a century, inspiring books, plays, films, and art.

For Gina Perry, the story of the experiments never felt finished. Listening to participants’ accounts and reading Milgram’s unpublished files and notebooks, she pieced together an intriguing, sensational story: Milgram’s plans went further than anyone had imagined. This is the compelling tale of one man’s ambition and of the experiment that defined a generation.

Read an extract from the book here.