Double Exposure

How Social Psychology Fell in Love with the Movies

Kathryn Millard

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781978809475
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Double Exposure examines the role of film in shaping social psychology's landmark postwar experiments. We are told that most of us will inflict electric shocks on a fellow citizen when ordered to do so. Act as a brutal prison guard when we put on a uniform. Walk on by when we see a stranger in need. But there is more to the story. Documentaries that investigators claimed as evidence were central to capturing the public imagination. Did they provide an alibi for twentieth century humanity? Examining the dramaturgy, staging and filming of these experiments, including Milgram's Obedience Experiments, the Stanford Prison Experiment and many more, Double Exposure recovers a new set of narratives.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Setting the Scene
• 2. “You’re an Actor Now”
• 3. New Haven Noir
• 4. Good or Bad Samaritans?
• 5. Doing Time
• 6. Crime Scenes
• 7. Restaging the Psychology Experiment
• 8. “I Was the SYSTEM”
• 9. Shifting the Story
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author