The pressure to obey can be resisted if there is another person who is seen to disobey. In one of Milgram's variations, the rate of obedience dropped from 65% to 10% when the genuine participant was joined by a disobedient confederate. The participant may not follow the disobedient person's behaviour but the point is the other person's disobedience acts as a 'model' of dissent for the participant to copy and this frees him to act from his own conscience. The disobedient model challenges the legitimacy of the authority figure, making it easier for others to disobey.
