1.2 Obedience

What is Obedience?

Complying with the demands of someone you see as an authority figure.

What sparked Milgram's interest in obedience?

• trials of Nazis who had worked in the death camps: their defense was that they had simply been obeying orders.

• sought an answer to the question of why such a high proportion of the German population obeyed Hitler's commands to murder over 6 million during WW2.

What was Milgram's procedure (1963)?

• 40 American men volunteered at Yale University.

• drew lots to see who would be the 'Teacher' (T) and who would be the 'Learner' (L). fixed so that the genuine participant was always the teacher.

• Experimenter (E), who was also a confederate and was dressed in a grey lab coat.

• asked to learn a set of word pairs and the teacher would test his knowledge.

• placed in adjacent rooms and the teacher was positioned in front of a set of controls to administer electric shocks to the learner.

• instructed to punish the learner with a shock after each incorrect he gave. When the teacher displayed a reluctance to injure the learner, they were encouraged to continue the procedure.

Milgram argued that obedience, results from what two opposing sets of demands?

1. The external authority: Authority of the authority figure;

2. The internal authority: Authority of our own conscience.

What were Milgram's results and conclusion?

• 65% of participants went all the way up to 450 volts.

• 100% of participants went up to 300 volts. Many of the participants showed signs of emotional distress e.g. shaking, sweating, groaning, seizures.

The conclusion is that, under the right conditions, people will commit acts of destructive obedience towards someone they have just met.

How did Situational Variable affect Milgram’s experiemnt?

In the proximity variation, both were moved to the same room. The obedience rate dropped from 65% to 40%.

In the touch proximity variation, the teacher then had to force the learner's hand onto the electroshock plate. The obedience rate dropped further to 30%.

In the remote instruction variation, the experimenter left the room and gave instructions by telephone. The obedience rate dropped to 20.5%.

What were Ethical issues of Milgram's studies?

Deception: Participants thought the allocation of roles of both was random, but they were not, as Milgram's confederate was always the learner.

- Participants believed the electric shocks were real

- Debriefed: afterwards to ensure they understood the real intentions of the experiment

What were the Limitation of Milgram's research?

Participants may have known it was a fake situation, especially in the uniform variation when the experimenter was called away and replaced by a passer-by wearing casual clothes.

What is Research support for Milgram? (Beauvoir et al 2012)

A French documentary (game show) where participants were contestants in a pilot episode for a new show called Le Jeu De La Mort (The Game of Death).

Participants were paid to give electric shocks ordered by the presenter to other participants in front of a studio audience. The participants who were receiving the shocks were actors and the shocks were fake.

The result showed that 80% of the participants delivered the maximum shock of 460 volts to what appeared to be an unconscious man.

Participants' behavior was almost identical to that of Milgram's participants, they showed signs of anxiety, nervous laughter and nail-biting. This supports Milgram's original findings of obedience to authority

What is the Autonomous State?

Means the person has autonomy over their actions and can act according to their own principles.

What is Legitimacy of authority?

The idea that individuals are more likely to obey those in positions of authority because they are perceived as legitimate. e.g. police/teachers/doctors.

What is the Authoritarian personality?

• extreme respect for authority, status and hierarchies; despise those they consider to be 'weak'; has conventional attitudes towards gender, sexuality, race etc. Is rigid in their beliefs; is justice-focused; is likely to have right-wing political views.

• the result of harsh parenting in which discipline was a key feature and expectation of 'perfect' behaviour is common i.e. the child is shown love as long as they behave exactly how the parent wants them to behave.

What is Adorno et al.'s research?

• developed a questionnaire called the F-Scale (fascist scale) to test whether someone had an authoritarian personality. He studied more than 2000 middle-class white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups.

• Those who scored high on the F-Scale identified with strong people, had contempt for the weak, admired high-status individuals and exhibited 'black and white' views. There were strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice.