Obedience

Obedience is when a person complies with the orders of an authority figure

Milgram (1963): obedience experiments

Aim: to investigate the extent to which people obey the orders of an authority figure

Procedure:

  • 40 American male participants aged 20-50 were told they were taking part in a study of the effects of punishment on memory and learning

  • The confederate “experimenter” wore a lab coat to create an impression of authority and told the participant he had been randomly assigned the role of “teacher” and another participant who was a confederate had been assigned the role of “learner”

  • The experimenter told the participant the test would involve giving increasingly powerful electric shocks to the learner from a machine

  • The participant watched the learner be strapped into a chair and have electrodes attached to his body. The participant was given a 45V shock so that he believed everything was real

  • In the room next door, the teacher was instructed to teach the learner a list of word pairs. For each wrong answer, the teacher had to give an electric shock increasing in power with each wrong answer starting at 15V up to 450V

  • At 150V the learner began to protest. These protests increased in intensity with the increasing voltage. At 315V the learner screamed in pain. After 330V the learner went silent

  • If the participant asked to stop the experiment, the experimenter would reply with 1 of 4 successive prods:

    • “please continue”

    • “the experiment requires you to continue”

    • “it is absolutely essential that you continue”

    • “you have no other choice, you must go on”

Results:

  • 65% of participants administered shocks all the way up to the maximum of 450V

  • 100% of participants administered shocks up to 300V

  • Most participants displayed physical symptoms of discomfort. 3 participants suffered seizures from the stress

Milgram’s study was in part motivated to understand why Nazi soldiers in WWII acted how they did. He wanted to know if the German people had a uniquely obedient disposition. The study suggests not, American people will also obey the demands of an authority figure even if it means going against their moral compass.

Evaluation:

+ Milgram’s results have been replicated several times which suggests they are reliable

+ Milgram’s experiments demonstrate the extent to which humans obey authority. This is a valuable psychological insight that could have beneficial applications in society

- The study was considered so unethical that Milgram’s membership of the American Psychological Association was suspended. Criticisms include the extreme stress placed upon participants as evidenced by the 3 who suffered seizures. However, participants were debriefed after the study and it can be argued that the findings are so valuable the benefits outweigh the distress caused to them

- There have been methodological criticisms. Some psychologists argued that many participants didn’t believe the shocks were real. However in post-study interviews 75% of participants said they believed the shocks were real and the physiological symptoms of stress observed in many participants suggest they really did believe they were inflicting harm

Variables affecting obedience

Milgram conducted variations of his experiment to test how different situational variables affect obedience

  • Proximity - obedience declined when the participant and learner were in the same room to 40%. In one experiment the participant had to hold the learners arm onto a shock plate which resulted in just 30%. The proximity of the authority figure also effects obedience. When the experimenter gave instructions via telephone obedience fell to 21%

  • Location - obedience increases in institutional and official seeming environments. Milgram’s original experiment was conducted at the prestigious Yale university but when replicated in an office in a bad part of town obedience dropped to 47.5%

  • Uniforms - The experimenter was replaced mid-way through by someone wearing ordinary clothes who told the participant to increase the voltage with each wrong answer. Obedience fell to 20%

The influence of uniform is further supported by Bickman (1974) who found that 38% of participants obeyed the orders of someone wearing a security guard’s uniform compared to 19% when wearing ordinary clothes and 14% when wearing a milkman’s uniform.

Explanations of obedience

Milgram’s distinction between the agentic state and autonomous state partly explains why people obey authority

  • Autonomous state - when an individual is freely and consciously in control of their actions and takes responsibility for them

  • Agentic state - when an individual becomes de-individuated and considers themselves an agent of an authority figure and not personally responsible for their actions

According to Milgram, we are taught from a young age that obedience is necessary for an orderly society but this requires an individual to give up some amount of free will. When an individual obeys an authority figure, they hand over responsibility for their actions to the person giving orders. In the agentic state a person will obey instructions that go against their moral compass because they don’t consider themselves personally responsible for them.

  • Legitimacy of authority - individuals may accept that an authority figure has a legitimate right to be giving orders. Obedience to authority figures in necessary for an orderly society and so are more likely to do as they say. Participants were more likely to obey the experimenter if he was wearing a lab coat and the prestigious location of Yale university likely increased the perceived legitimacy. If a person accepts an authority figure as legitimate they will feel they have a duty to do as they say

  • The authoritarian personality - some people have an inherent disposition towards obedience. This would be an internal explanation because it explains obedience as part of someone’s personality. Fromm proposed the authoritarian personality: people whose disposition makes them submissive to authority and dominating of people with a lower status within the hierarchy and members of an out-group. Adorno et al (1950) created the F-scale personality test to measure the authoritarian personality in people. Milgram found that people who were highly obedient in his experiment scored higher on the F-scale than those who disobeyed. This suggest the authoritarian personality type can partly explain obedience.