Core Studies: Bocchairo

• What behaviour does Bocchairo study?

  Obedience, disobedience and whistleblowing.
• What options did participants have in Bocchairo's study regarding their response to an unjust request?

  Participants were given the option to obey, disobey, or whistleblow an unjust request.
• What was the first half of Bocchairo’s background?

  1. Milgram found the main response to authority was obedience but didn’t investigate other responses like whistleblowing.
  2. Social power research found its difficult to defy authority figures so more than just sit experience responsible, like whistleblowers who expose unjust behaviour in an organisation after observing it.
• What was the second half of Bocchairo’s background?

  3. Research by Milgram found that a high proportion of people will obey authority figures when asked to harm another person

  4. Bocchairo wanted to expand on this research by giving participants the option to defy authority; disobey or whistleblow (as well as obey) in relation to an unjust request. He also wanted to investigate the disposition so factors related to this.
• What was Bocchairo’s three aims?

  1. Investigate rates of obedience, disobedience and whistleblowing in a situation where a request if ethically wrong.
  2. Investigate the accuracy of people’s estimations of other people’s responses (obey, disobey, WB) to authority.
  3. Investigate the role of disposition so factors in obeying, disobeying and WB.
• What's Bocchairo's sample?


  149 undergraduate students fromm VU uni in Amsterdam, men and women, average age 20.8
• What was Bocchairo's sampling method?

  Volunteer; they were paid 7 euros or course credit
• What was the research method?

  scenario study, ran 8 pilot tests before to see if cover story believable and credible
• What were Bocchairo's findings?

  (quan) comparison group for themselves aid 64.5% WB vs actual 9.4% WB, 76.5% obeyed and 14% disobeyed

  (qual) no significant differences found in ps responses in terms of gender etc, however trend that WBs tended to have a faith
• What were Bocchairo's conclusions?

  1. Ppl tend to obey authority even if it's unjust
  2. What ppl say they and others will do in a given situation differs from what they actually do
  3. Appears to be a trend WB have more faith than those who dis/obey, suggests that dispostional factors relate to WB.
• Explain how/why a comparison group was used by Bocchairo?


  Day before study 138 students were asked ot listen to fake cover story and answer 1. what they'd do (o,d or wb), 2. predict what other people would do, so he could compare results and check for consistencies.
• What was Bocchairo's procedure part 1?

  1. Each p met formally dressed male Dutch experimenter (AF) who requested they gave the details of 3 friends to take in an unethical study into sensory deprivation (fake cover story)
  2. ps told Uni Ethics Committee in next room evaluating whether to approve study and collecting feedback from students to help decision
• What was Bocchairo's procedure part 2?

  1. ps given 3 mins in room alone to decide; obey (write letters to friends), disobey (do nothing) or WB (report ethical violations to Committee), then given 7 minutes to do task
  2. after given two personality tests HEXACO and Social Value Orientation
  3. fully debriefed and asked to sign consent form, fully informed of true aim and told cover story was fake