Moral Science and the Milgram Paradigm

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 1 begins our study of morality and Milgram by reviewing the psychology and sociology of morality. We emphasize how both fields have traditionally neglected the study of ordinary, everyday morality as a social interactional phenomenon. To bring our own interaction order approach into sharper focus, we critique three influential exemplars in what has been called “the new sociology of morality”: the well-known contributions of Ann Swidler, Stephen Vaisey, and Gabriel Abend. Next, we review the Milgram paradigm in social psychology, discussing the original experiments and the older and newer Milgram literatures. Finally, we propose that these two bodies of scholarship have important lessons to learn from each other. The sociology of morality calls attention to the social production of moral meanings, actions, situations, and identities, all of which are indispensable for understanding the Milgram experiments and which the Milgram literature has, in large part, neglected. At the same time, the Milgram experiments provide a perspicuous illustration of how moral meanings, actions, situations, and identities are products of interaction, rather than its antecedents, a point that sociologists of morality have yet to take fully onboard.