Obedience
Obedience is when someone acts in response to an order from an authority figure. Milgram, devised an experiment to test this particular idea.
Milgram’s (1963) study of obedience
Aim - To investigate how far people will go in obeying an authority figure.
Participants - 40 American males aged 20-50. Milgram obtained participants by advertising in a newspaper (volunteer sample). They were paid $4.50. Participants were told they were taking part in an experiment on learning.
Procedure -
Held in Yale university.
Participants were introduced to Mr Wallace.
The participants (also called the teachers) were taken into another room which a schock metre and were told to ask Mr Wallace questions, if he got the question right then he wouldn’t be shocked but if he got it wrong or refused to answer then he’d be shocked and the voltage would increase by 15V. After each shock Mr Wallace would let out a big scream, however they were just pre-recordings and he wasn’t actually being shocked.
If the participant refused to carry on a person with a science robe told them they have to keep going, the whole point of this was to see how far the participants would go before stopping.
Explanations of Obedience
Explanations of obedience fall into 3 areas:
Situational - Proximity, Location and uniform.
Psychological - agentic state and legitimacy of authority.
Dispositional - the authoritarian personality.
Situational variables:
A form of an explanation of obedience, where features of an environment are seen as affecting obedience levels. This was mainly investigated by Milgram.
Proximity
Proximity refers to they physical closeness or distance of an authority figure to the person they are giving the orders to. For example:
There was a 40% obedience rate when the participant and ‘authority' figure’ were face to face in Milgram’s study whereas;
There was 20.5% obedience when the participant and the ‘authority figure’ were over the phone.
Location
In another variation of Milgram’s study he changed the location of the experiment. The experiment was now conducted in a run-down office block instead of the prestigious Yale university. The recorded obedience rate was not 47.5% which is a significant contrast to the original 65%.
Uniform
In Milgram’s research, the experimenter wore a grey laboratory coat. This ‘uniform’ was designed to give him a look of authority. In one variation of the study the researcher was taken away due to having to take a phone call and then being replaced by a person wearing normal clothes. Obedience rates then dropped to 20% in the variation of this study.
Legitimacy of authority and Agency theory
Legitimacy of authority
An explanation of obedience that suggests that we are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us.
This was mainly studied by Bickman (1974) who experimented who people are more likely to listen to. He found:
Security guard had 38% obedience rates.
Milkman had 14% obedience rates.
Civilian had 19% obedience rates.
Agency theory
Milgram (1973) proposed the concept of an agentic state to explain why people prepared to go against their will and do as their told even if it causes them distress. He suggested that there are two distinct models of social consciousness:
Autonomous state - Individuals direct their own behaviour, and take responsibility for the consequences and take responsibility for their consequences.
Agentic state - Individuals allow someone else to direct their behaviour - they pass responsibility to them.
The authoritarian personality
Adorno believed that there was a personality basis to obedience and disobedience. This is a dispositional explanation of why people obey - that certain personality characteristics are associated with higher levels of obedience. This can be contrasted with Milgram’s idea that situational factors are responsible for obedience.
The Authoritarian personality provided a possible explanation for why some people require very little pressure in order to obey.