Scholars have become engaged in the comparative examination of differing slave systems such as those of North and South America.

More recently, Stanley M.Elkins has begun an inquiry into the impact of a slave system in forming the individual character of the slaves within that system.

In his provocative study, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life, he has made some interesting comparisons between the American slave system and the German concentration camps and has endeavored to account for their respective impacts on character formation through the social-psychological theories of personality formation.
In Elkins's thinking, the concentration camps were a modern example of a rigid system controlling mass behavior.

Because some of those who experienced them were social scientists trained in the skills of observation and analysis, they provide a basis for insights into the way in which a particular social system can influence mass character.

While there is also much literature about American slavery written both by slaves and masters, none of it was written from the viewpoint of modern social sciences.