April 2006    

World as Laboratory: Experiments with Mice, Mazes and Men Author: Rebecca Lemov Publisher: Hill & Wang $30.00 (Cloth) 291 p. ISBN: 0809074648 B&T         YBP In 1961 social psychologist Stanley J. Milgram set about to test a hypothesis posed by Hannah Arendt on the banality of evil: the willingness of ordinary people to obey orders, no matter how heinous the outcome. The experiment went like this: test subjects were paired with a "dummy" partner whom, they were told, would get a varied range of electrical shocks via electrode whenever they answered a question wrong. The questioning and the shocking would be carried out by the subjects to the partner, who was whisked away to another room never to be seen again-although the subject could hear him. The subjects' willingness to shock their fellow humans despite obvious suffering and protests demonstrated a glaring truth that humans can be persuaded to do anything. It also opened up questions about the ethics of such experiments. With what might be termed 20-20 hindsight, Lemov examines the history of the movement called social engineering, from seemingly simplistic experiments with mice, rats and mazes to the ambitious project called Human Relations Area Files at Yale University. The findings of sociologists and anthropologists were used to help the U.S. occupy countries during World War II with moderate success, and the CIA actively recruited psychologists, anthropologists and sociologists to its cause during the 1950s and 1960s. The suspected brainwashing of captured soldiers in the Korean War brought on a renewed concern for Communist take over with many a human engineer engaged to reverse the process. The legacy of social engineering research has continued to this day in the form of advertising, political spin, mass media and so on. "The laboratory research from 1900 to 1963," Lemov states in her conclusion, "was a preview of the kind of reality people now inhabit that fits its subjects like a glove…so comfortably tailored they hardly realize they are wearing it." The experiments chronicled in this book seem childish and simplistic, many of them nightmarish and downright immoral. But the consequences of this long train of scientific inquiry through much of the 20th century remain with us today. Highly recommended for anthropology, sociology and social psychology collections, this book also makes good reading for the lightly paranoid who want confirmation that they are, in fact, being manipulated by The Man. -- Aileen G.R. Chute Published by YBP Library Services 999 Maple St., Contoocook, NH 03229 USA v: 800.258.3774   f: 603.746.5628 w: www.ybp.com   e: academia@ybp.com All rights reserved.