Obedience

• Milgram's study

  Aim: To investigate if individuals would obey orders of authority figures. Procedure: 40 Male Americans aged 20-50 volunteered for a study of memory at Yale. Met by an experimenter in a lab coat and Mr Wallace (both confederates). Drew what they thought were ‘random’ lots for teacher/learner, ppt was always teacher.
• Milgram Procedure: Taken to a room where the learner is strapped to a chair and teacher given 45 volt sample shock. In the adjoining room the teacher sits at a shock generator which had switches from 15v to 450v and labels describing the shock such as ‘severe’. Teacher read paired association words and shock every incorrect answer. Prods if teacher refuses. 150v - learner protests / 300v - refuses to answer / 330v - stops making noise.
• Milgram Findings: 100% went to 300v, 65% went to 450v. Pps commented about how they ‘couldn’t do this to a man’. They showed signs of extreme tension, e.g. sweating, trembling, digging nails into their skin. Conclusion: people obey those in authority even if it means harming an innocent individual.
• Milgram situational variables

  Proximity: teacher and learner in the same room - obedience dropped to 40% / the teacher had to force the learner’s hand onto an electromagnetic shock plate - obedience 30% / experimenter issued instructions over the phone - obedience 20.5%. Location: when moved to a run down office obedience dropped to 48%. Uniform: conveys power and legitimacy, in Milgram’s study experimenter wore a lab coat. Bickman found people were more likely to obey a person dressed as a police officer, 72% more than in a tracksuit.
• Milgram Evaluation

  Ethical considerations: did not take into account protection from harm as many pps showed signs of stress, deceived the ‘teacher’ in multiple ways and did not make it clear of right to withdraw. Lacked ‘mundane realism’: giving shocks to someone in a laboratory is not reflective of obedience. However, Hofling et al found 95% of nurses obeyed a doctor to give a dosage of drugs to a patient that was twice as high as advised on the bottle. This suggests Milgram’s results do have ecological validity.
• Milgram Evaluation Continued

  However, when Rank and Jacobson repeated Hofling’s procedure, more realistically, obedience dropped to 11%. Suggesting Milgram’s results do not reflect real situations of obedience. Pps must have guessed the learner wasn’t really receiving electric shocks - high obedience rates would be due to ‘demand characteristics’. However, physical displays of stress indicate pps did believe they were hurting someone. To check this Milgram interviewed pps afterwards - many reported they thought the shocks were real. This suggests Milgram’s study has high internal validity.
• Milgram Evaluation of situational variables

  In all variations of Milgram’s study at least one person obeyed. For these people, the situation did not influence their obedience and therefore their disposition (character) may be more of an influence. Situational variables cannot explain the mass killings of Jews as most took place in close proximity to the victim and without the presence of the authority figure.
• Explanations of Obedience

  Agentic Shift – moving from an autonomous state (feeling responsible for their actions) to an agentic state (feeling someone else is responsible). Eg - soldiers obeying orders of superiors due to diminished responsibility. Milgram found when a peer administered the shocks obedience rose to 92.5% and when the experimenter gave instructions over the phone it dropped to 20.5%.
• Explanations of Obedience Continued

  Legitimate authority - where we believe someone has been given authority by society and they have the power to inflict consequences for disobedience. Their status is often shown by a uniform or connection with a prestigious location. We obey them because we have been socialised to do so. When the experimenter in a lab coat was replaced by a man in everyday clothes obedience dropped to 20%. When Milgram changed the location to a run down office obedience dropped to 48%.
• Dispositional explanations

  Authoritarian personality – A personality type according to Adorno where people show extreme obedience towards high status individuals and are dismissive of those they believe to be of low status. This personality causes high obedience as those with it have been raised by strict parents which demands unconditional respect for authority. People with this personality are conformist, prejudice and susceptible to fascist propaganda. Adorno developed the F-scale, which measures an individuals tendency towards fascism – a core element of the authoritarian personality.