Obedience - Milgram's Research

• • Obedience is a more direct form of social influence where the individual has arguably less choice whether to behave in a particular way.
• • An individual is faced with a choice of whether to obey a direct order from a person with a higher status, or whether they defy the order.
• • A person issuing an order is usually a figure of authority that has the power to punish when obedient behaviour is not forthcoming.
• • Milgram want to answer why such a high proportion of the German people supported Hitler's plans to murder millions of innocent people during the holocaust during WW2.
• Situational factors in Obedience - Location

  • The original study was conducted in psychology laboratory at Yale university. Many of the participants commented on how the location of the study gave them confidence in the people involved.
  • Milgram then moved his study to a run-down office with no obvious connections to Yale.
  • Obedience rates did drop slightly but not significantly with 48% of participating delivering the 450 maximum shock
• Situational factors in Obedience - Uniform

  • Bushman (1988)- carried out a study where a female researcher, dressed as: police, business executive or beggar then people were stopped in the street and told them to give change to the researcher for an expired parking tickets
  • When a police 72% of people obeyed, when a business executive 48% obeyed, when a beggar 52% of people obeyed.
• Situational factors in Obedience - Proximity

  • In the proximity variations, obedience falls to 40% when both teacher and learner were at in the same room.
  • In another proximity variation, the teacher was required to force the learners hand onto the shock plate, obedience fell to 30%.
  • When the experiment left and gave further orders over the phone obedience fell to 20 %.