Topic 2 - Obedience (Milgram's study)

obedience

• compliance to an order , request or the law from a person or person of authority - obedience involves an authority figure conformity does not

explanations for obedience

• dispositional factors of obedience

• authoritarian personality

• psychological explanations

• agentic state

• legitimacy of authority

• situational variables

• uniform

• location

• proximity

The agentic state - diffusion of responsibility (psychological explanation)

• when people are given a command by an authority figure, they switch into a different state in which they no longer feel personally responsible for their actions

• they see themselves as an agent of the authority figure ( obedience autopilot u do things without thinking if you should do it or not)

• individual gives up their free will and no longer sees themselves as acting independently but as an agent who implements someone else’s decision

The autonomous state

• where we are aware of consequences and responsibility, and act and think as an independent individual guided by our conscience

• we feel in control and accept personal responsibility for our actions and feel guilt

• in this state we would only follow orders if we agree explicitly with the action

agentic state and moral strain

• Milgram - someone in the agentic state will experience moral strain

• includes - feeling distressed or uncomfortable as a result of going against your conscience and doing something you know to be wrong

• consequence of being in the agentic state

• example of moral strain - conflict between 2 values such as - you must not hurt anybody, and you must always obey authority

• if you can only do 1 of these, then it causes you moral strain and cognitive stress

coping with moral strain : psychological defence mechanisms to reduce their anxieties

repression - uncomfortable or guilt-inducing thoughts and memories are pushed out of conscious awareness - unconscious person isn’t fully aware they are avoiding the thought - the mind tells them to protect themselves from the anxiety

denial - as seen by many Nazi soldiers - denied that the holocaust even happened

• Binding factors - reasons people give themselves to justify their ongoing obedience to an authority figure, even when they feel uncomfortable with the actions they are performing - variables that keep us locked into the agentic state

• they are subtle psychological defence mechanisms that trap people in a situation making it difficult for them to disobey or disengage - in a situation where you agreed to do something wrong - binding factors act like invisible strings that keep you tied to the situation making it difficult to break free

• fear of being rude or arrogant - socialised to be polite and respectful, especially to authority figures - breaking from this could feel like violating or crossing ethical boundaries

• need to maintain consistency in our words and actions - if already obeyed smaller requests bigger ones are harder to refuse even if it crosses a line.

evaluation of agentic state

• weakness: Fails to explain why people in the same situation as obedient individuals do not obey - Not all students copy others’ behaviour — some act differently despite the same situation - not useful doesn’t full explain - other factors such as personality or moral reasoning may also influence obedience meaning the agentic state alone cannot fully account for behaviour

• weakness : socially sensitive - The theory suggests that people obey because they are in an agentic state, which implies humans do not have full free will when under authority - This can be controversial as it may be used to excuse harmful behaviour, shifting blame from the individual to the authority figure, and reducing personal responsibility.
  Therefore, the explanation may be ethically problematic as it undermines the idea of individual moral responsibility.

• strength: research support.
  Evidence: Milgram’s obedience studies found that many participants followed orders to give shocks when instructed by an authority figure, even when they believed they were harming another person.
  Explain: This supports the idea that people may enter an agentic state, seeing themselves as acting on behalf of the authority and passing responsibility to them. This increases scientific support and gives the theory an element of credibility.
  Link: Therefore, the agentic state explanation is strengthened by experimental evidence showing authority can lead to obedience.

legitimacy of authority (psychological explanation)

• This suggests that if we perceive the authority figure as having the power to tell us what to do, then we are more likely to obey them.

• example - what they look like, how they’re dressed, wearing any symbols of authority, behaviour

• Individuals have a subjective perception of whether someone has a deserved authority status - individuals base their perceptions on where they are in the social hierarchy and where the authority is ( students see themselves as lower in the hierarchy compared to teachers - obey them as they see teachers as educated and qualified - have the right to make a command.

• socialised to recognise legitimate authority: by parents at home and teachers at school to obey those who have authority over us - obey people with authority as we trust them or they have the power to punish us.

• we have been taught to accept that certain people have been given authority and power in certain situations - this can come from their role or expertise - doctor, scientist, teacher - obey them as we are taught they have a right to make a command

further research support for legitimacy of authority - Bickman (1974)

• Aim

  • To investigate the effect of legitimate authority (signalled by uniforms) on obedience in a real-world setting.

• Method / Procedure

  • Field experiment in New York City.

  • Confederate dressed in three different outfits:

    • Security guard uniform (symbol of authority)

    • Milkman’s outfit (non-authority uniform)

    • Ordinary civilian clothes

  • Confederate asked members of the public to perform simple tasks, e.g.:

    • Pick up litter

    • Give a coin for a parking meter

  • Observed whether people obeyed or not.

• Findings / Results

  • People were significantly more likely to obey the confederate dressed as a security guard.

  • Obedience was lower for milkman and civilian outfits.

  • about 38% obedience for the civilian, 48% for the milkman, and around 70% obedience for the security guard (approximate figures, but good for remembering differences).

• Conclusion

  • Uniforms act as visible symbols of legitimate authority.

  • This increases obedience because people perceive the authority figure as having the right to give orders.

  • Supports the legitimacy of authority explanation for obedience.

• Strengths / Evaluation Points to Remember (optional but useful)

  • Ecological validity: Study was done in a real-world setting, so findings generalise better than lab studies.

  • Supports Milgram’s theory: Provides real-life evidence of how perceived legitimacy affects obedience.

  • Ethical issues: Participants didn’t give informed consent and were unaware they were part of a study, raising ethical concerns.

Further research support - Hofling’s study

• Aim

  • To investigate obedience to authority in a real hospital setting, specifically whether nurses would obey orders that broke hospital rules.

• Method / Procedure

  • Field experiment in hospitals.

  • A confederate pretending to be a doctor called nurses and instructed them to give an unknown drug (Astroten) at a dosage twice the allowed limit.

  • Nurses were not supposed to obey orders without written authorisation or knowledge of the drug.

• Findings / Results

  • 21 out of 22 nurses (95%) obeyed the order and prepared to administer the drug.

  • Most nurses later said they would not have obeyed if they had time to reflect or check the order.

• Conclusion

  • Nurses obeyed legitimate authority even when it meant breaking safety rules, showing the strong power of perceived authority on obedience.

• Evaluation points

  • High ecological validity (real hospital setting).

  • Ethical issues with deception and risk.

  • Supports Milgram’s agentic state theory and legitimacy of authority explanation.

evaluations for legitimacy of authority

1. Has face validity
Point: A strength of the legitimacy of authority explanation is that it has face validity.
Evidence: People naturally accept orders from those they perceive as legitimate authorities, such as police officers or teachers.
Explain: This fits with everyday experience and makes the theory seem plausible because it aligns with how people behave in real life.
Link: Therefore, the explanation is easy to understand and intuitively convincing, which supports its validity.

2. Supported by real-life examples
Point: The legitimacy of authority explanation is supported by real-life examples.
Evidence: For instance, people are more likely to obey individuals wearing high-visibility jackets, which are often seen as a symbol of authority.
Explain: This shows that visible symbols like uniforms can increase obedience outside laboratory settings, improving the theory’s ecological validity.
Link: Hence, the theory is strengthened by evidence from everyday social situations.

3. Lacks cultural universality
Point: A limitation of the legitimacy of authority explanation is that it may not apply universally across cultures.
Evidence: Uniforms such as high-visibility jackets are not always recognized as symbols of authority in different cultures.
Explain: This means the theory cannot fully explain obedience in societies where authority is perceived differently, reducing its generalisability.
Link: Therefore, the explanation has limited cross-cultural validity.

4. Supported by Milgram’s research
Point: Another strength of the legitimacy of authority explanation is that it is supported by Milgram’s research.
Evidence: Milgram found that participants obeyed orders from an experimenter dressed in a lab coat, demonstrating obedience to a perceived legitimate authority.
Explain: This experimental evidence provides scientific support, increasing the credibility of the theory.
Link: Thus, the theory is bolstered by empirical findings.

The authoritarian personality (dispositional factor)

• Some people are more likely to obey others due to an obedience personality

• Adorno proposed that people with a AP are more obedient, have a greater deal of respect for order and hierarchy.

• Adorno developed a questionnaire called the F scale - which asks respondents a set of questions about their attitudes towards authority figures; the higher the score on F scale, the more obedient the person is likely to be.

• AP can be due to harsh upbringing with little love and more punishment - this will lead to a fear of parents, leading to lots of respect for authority figures if its hate for parents - hate and anger will be displaced onto others.

• due to childhood experiences

research support for authoritarian personality - Elms and Milgram

• wanted to see if the obedient participants in Milgram’s research were more likely to display AP traits in comparison to disobedient participants

• 20 obedient and 20 disobedient ppts were involved; they all completed Adorno’s F-scale questionnaire

• obedient ppts scored higher on the F scale - less close to fathers and admired the experimenter more in the study compared to the disobedient ppts.

evaluations for authoritarian personality

• strength: effectively explains individual difference in obedience - suggests that situational explanations are ineffective - seen in milgrams study that even when the environment was standardised and the same for everyone some people still disobeyed.

• Weakness: Only a correlation between strict parenting and obedience can be established, so causation cannot be determined. There may be more than one reason for the cause of another. Strict parenting could be due to cultural background, education, etc., so it cannot be strictly stated that strict parenting causes AP - this lowers the studies validity - its conclusions about the true cause of obedience may be inaccurate or oversimplified - To address this, further research (e.g., longitudinal studies, experiments, or cross-cultural comparisons) would be needed to test whether strict parenting actually causes the authoritarian personality, rather than it just being associated with it.

• weakness : Point: The way the authoritarian personality is measured is subject to bias.
  Evidence: Questionnaires (e.g., the F-scale) can lead to social desirability bias, where participants give socially acceptable answers rather than truthful ones.
  Explain: This means the results may not accurately reflect true authoritarian traits, lowering the validity of the measurement.
  Link: Therefore, conclusions drawn about the relationship between personality and obedience may be inaccurate, limiting the usefulness of the findings.

Key Research - Milgram

• Aim - To investigate the extent to which ordinary people would obey an authority figure, even if it meant harming another person. Specifically, Milgram wanted to test whether Germans were more obedient (the “Germans are different” hypothesis)

• sample - study involved 40 male participants aged between 20-50 years who believed they were taking part in a study on learning and memory - recruited through advertisement (volunteer sampling) - lab experiment

• procedure - 2 participants were assigned to either the role of a teacher ( given to actual ppts) or a learner who was the confederate

• The teacher and learner were put into separate rooms and the teacher was then asked by the experimenter to do electric shocks (harmless) to the learner each time he gave the wrong answer. These shocks increased each time the learner gave the wrong answer from 15V to 450V v.

• the experimenter wore a lab coat - it made it seem like he had higher authority - his role was to give a series of orders when ppts refused to give the shock to the learner

• experimenter gave 4 prods each one getting more serious and demanding

• results - all ppts went to 300 v and 65 % willing to go to 450 v

evaluations for milgram’s study

• weakness: study lacked ecological validity - carried out in lab artificial setting - cant generalize findings to real-life settings as people don’t usually receive orders to shock another person.

• sample biased - only male - androcentric - all American - results cannot be generalised to females or people from different backgrounds

• ethical issues - deception as ppts believed they were doing a study for learning and memory - tricked into believing they are harming the learner when they weren’t.

• protection of participants was not kept - psychological harm - exposed to stressful situations - visibly distressed - trembling and shaking = 3 had seizures and many pleaded to stop the study - 1 was so bad the experiment had to be stopped

• no right to withdraw - exp kept pressuring the ppts to carry on giving the shocks when they were visibly distressed and wanted to stop.

• strengths : High control → strong internal validity

  • The study was conducted in a controlled laboratory environment at Yale University, which allowed Milgram to control extraneous variables (e.g., the same experimenter, location, shock machine, and learner’s script), making it easy to replicate. increases reliability

  • All participants experienced the same standardised procedure, including the learner’s scripted responses and the experimenter’s four standard prods.

  • This consistency means differences in obedience levels are unlikely to be caused by other factors, increasing the internal validity and making it more likely the findings reflect the true effect of authority on behaviour.

• research support - Hofling nurses and doctors

Milgram’s variables that affect obedience (situational variables)

• proximity - How physically close the teacher is to the learner, or the teacher to the experimenter.

• when teacher and learner were in the same room, and the participant could see the fake consequences of his actions, obedience to 450 v fell from 65% (when in same room) to 40% (separate rooms) - when the experimenter rang in his orders, obedience fell even harder to 20.5%.

• The closer the authority or consequences are, the more pressure there is to obey. Increased physical or psychological distance from the victim reduces empathy and moral strain, lowering obedience.

• location - when Milgram switched his study from a top university to a run down office block, obedience fell from 47.5 to 60% - Definition: The prestige of the setting in which the orders are given.

  • Original study: Conducted at Yale University → 65% obedience.

  • Variation: Run-down office block instead of Yale → Obedience dropped to 47.5%.

  • A prestigious environment gives legitimacy to authority, making participants more likely to believe the experimenter has the right to give orders. Lower-status settings reduce perceived authority, lowering obedience.

• Uniform - Clothing worn by the authority figure, which can symbolise legitimate authority.

  • Bickman (1974) field experiment:

    • Confederate dressed as a guard → highest obedience.

    • Confederate dressed as milkman or in civilian clothes → lowest obedience.

  • Milgram’s variation: Experimenter replaced by a “member of the public” in everyday clothes → Obedience dropped from 65% to 20%.

  Explanation: Uniforms act as a visual cue for legitimate authority, increasing the likelihood of obedience. Without the uniform, the authority figure’s power is reduced.