Obedience

Obedience

A form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order. The person issuing the order is usually an authority figure, who has the power to punish when disobedient behaviour is expressed.

Milgram 1963

Designed a baseline procedure that could assess obedience levels

Procedure adapted in later variations by Milgram and the baseline findings were used to make comparisons.

Study was done to find the answer as to why a high proportion of the German population obeyed Hitler’s commands to kill over 6 million Jews during the Holocaust as well as millions of:

• Homosexuals

• Romani

• Black German and Polish people

• Members of other groups

Milgram procedure

40 American men volunteered to take part.

They were told the study was on memory

When the volunteers arrived they were introduced to a confederate of Milgram, disguised as another participant.

Drew lots to see who would be the Teacher or the Learner. Fixed draw so the real participant was always the Teacher.

An Experimenter was also involved, another confederate with a grey lab coat.

Aimed to assess obedience in a situation where authority figures ordered the participant to give an increasingly strong shock to a Leaner in a different room

Shocks started from 15 volts and went to 450 volts.

Shocks were fake but the real participant didn’t know this.

The real participant was given a shock of 45V to prove to them that it was real shocks.

Participants given 4 verbal prods if they protested to the experiment:

1. Please continue

2. The experiment requires that you continue

3. It is absolutely essential that you continue

4. You have no other choice, you must go on

Milgram findings

Every participant delivered shocks up to 300V.

12.5% stopped at 300V and 65% continued to 450V and were fully obedient.

Milgram collected quantitative data including observations such as the participants showing signs of tension, sweating, trembling, stuttering, lip biting, digging their fingernails into their skin and some had uncontrollable seizures.

Other Milgram data

Before the study, he asked 14 psychology students to predict the participant’s behaviour. They said only 3% would be fully obedient, opposed to the actual 65%.

Shows the findings are unexpected and the students underestimated the participants.

All participants were debriefed and assured that their behaviour was normal.

After a follow-up questionnaire, 84% said they were glad to have participated.

Conclusions

Concluded that German people are not ‘different’.

The American participants were willing to obey orders even when they might harm another person.

He suspected that there were certain factors in the situation that encouraged obedience, so he conducted further studies.

W Ethical issues

The role allocations were fixed. The shocks were fake.

Participants were told that it was a memory study but it was on obedience.

No right to withdraw with a lack of informed consent. Any damage to participants could be irreversible

Violates the protection of participants guideline.

S Contradiction to ethical issues

Milgram argued that the deception was used in order to avoid demand characteristics.

After a year, 84% of participants said that they were glad to have taken part.

Suggests that long-term psychological damage was minimal.

W Orne + Holland

Lacks internal validity due to demand characteristics

Argued that participants didn’t fully believe in the setup and that they developed demand characteristics.

If they realised that the shocks were fake, their high compliance rates do not represent actual destructive obedience.

Reduces the validity of the findings as the participants could have been ‘play-acting’. Hard to establish cause-and-effect between the authority figure’s prompts and obedience

S Burger

Research support

Created an Obedience Lite which avoids ethical issues.

Data collection happened until 150 Volts worth of shocks.

79% of participants continued to the end and were classed as fully obedient.

High external validity as lots of replications. Shows the findings are not limited to the context.

S High ecological validity

Hofling

Conducted a field study in a hospital.

Unknown doctor phoned nurses to administer an overdose of an unknown drug. 21/22 obeyed.

Demonstrates that people obey destructive orders from an authority figure in real-world settings.

Increases ecological validity due to the practical application so the results can be generalised to a wider population.