Obedience

• Milgram’s Obedience Study:

  • Influenced by the Holocaust.
  • 40 participants, up to 450V.
  • Everyone went up to 300V,
  • 65% went up to 450V.
  • ‘The experiment requires that you continue’.
  • 3 people had seizures, uncontrollable muttering, and sweating
• Situational Factors Affecting Obedience: Proximity:

  • Obedience dropped to 40% when the learner was in the same room as the teacher.
  • Requiring the teacher to force the learner's hand onto the shock plate physically reduced obedience to 30%.
  • When the experimenter gave instructions over the phone, obedience fell drastically to 21%.
• Situational Factors Affecting Obedience: Location:

  • Higher obedience in Yale compared to a rundown office setting.
• Situational Factors Affecting Obedience: Uniform:

  • Milgram:
  • Obedience dropped to 20% when the experimenter was in ordinary clothes.
  • Bushman Study (1988):
  • Police uniform (72%).
  • Business attire (52%),
  • Beggar’s clothing (48%).
• Milgram AO3: Weaknesses:

  • Biased sample.
  • All male
  • Volunteer sample
  • Cannot be generalised
  • Ethical Issues:
  • Deception, led to uncontrollable seizures.
  • Not given the right to withdraw
  • ‘the experiment requires that you continue’
  • Lack of internal validity:
  • A lot of participants raised concerns about the legitimacy of the shocks.
  • Unclear whether it was genuine obedience or demand characteristics.
• Agentic State:

  • People act as agents for an authority figure, feeling no personal responsibility for their actions.
• Maintenance of the Agentic Shift:

  • Social etiquette:
  • How to feel accepted, links to NSI
  • Binding Factors:
  • Allow the person to ignore the damaging effects of their actions to reduce moral strain.
  • Shifting responsibility to the victim:
  • Milgram: ‘he was foolish to enter’.
• Legitimacy of Authority:

  • Agentic shift only happens when there is a perception of a legitimate authority figure.
  • People see authority as legitimate through factors like proximity, uniformity, and location.
  • In Milgram’s Research:
  • Uniform: Experimenter = lab coat = legitimate authority
• Authoritarian Personality: A Dispositional Explanation:

  • An explanation of behaviour due to someone’s personality traits.
  • Often contrasted with situational explanations.
• Authoritarian Personality:

  • Someone with an authoritarian personality is likely to be submissive to those of a higher status and dismissive of inferiors.
  • California F Scale:
  • Adorno concluded that it formed in childhood because of hard parenting.
  • Parenting style followed strict discipline and impossibly high standards.
  • Characterised by conditional love.
  • These experiences create resentment, but the child cannot express these feelings directly against their parents, so the fears are displaced onto others who are perceived to be weaker.
• Adorno (1950): 


  • To investigate the link between personality traits (authoritarian personality) and obedience to authority.
  • Used the F-scale to measure authoritarian tendencies in over 2,000 middle-class, white Americans.
  • High F-scale scorers showed respect for authority, prejudice against lower-status groups, and traditional, rigid beliefs.
  • Suggested the authoritarian personality develops from a strict upbringing, leading to displaced hostility.
  • Concluded that personality influences obedience and prejudice more than situational factors.
• Elms (1966):

  • Investigated the relationship between authoritarian personality traits and obedience in Milgram’s experiments.
  • Included 20 fully obedient participants and 20 defiant participants from Milgram’s original study.
  • Procedure: Participants completed the F-scale and were interviewed about their childhood and attitudes toward authority.
  • Obedient participants scored higher on the F-scale, showing authoritarian traits and admiration for the experimenter.
  • Supports the idea that personality (authoritarian traits) influences obedience to authority
• Authoritarian Personality: A dispositional Explanation: Strength:

  • Variety of research to support Adorno’s study.
  • Elms and Milgram. 20 obedient participants administered the full 450V with 20 disobedient participants who did not go past 300V.
  • These participants carried out Adorno’s F Scale. Various personality tests.
  • Obedient participants scored higher on the F scale.
  • Participants were asked open-ended questions.
  • Correlational not causational. Intervening variables.
• Authoritarian Personality: A dispositional Explanation: Weakness:

  • Limited.
  • Criticised for its methodology.
  • Greenstein (1969) suggests that questions are suggestive causing a tendency for responses to be biased.
  • Causes demand characteristics.
  • Culturally bound tool.
  • Focuses on American values and ideologies.
• Authoritarian Personality: A dispositional Explanation: Weakness:

  • Milgram’s research might be a better explanation as it is situational not dispositional.
  • Milgram’s impact of uniform.
  • Obedience dropped 20% when the experimenter changed from a lab coat to normal clothes.
  • This suggests that the legitimacy of authority may be a stronger explanation.
  • Credibility.
  • Pre war Germany, millions of people displayed obedience.
  • All had different childhoods. Different personalities.
  • So situational factors are better.