Situational Variations

• Prestige: Experiment was moved from Yale to a rundown office block - levels dropped to 47.5%
• Responsibility: They read the paired words and someone else did the shocking, obedience rose to 92.5% (not directly responsible), but when they had to hold hands with them on the shock plate, it fell to 30%
• Buffer/Proximity: If they could see the ‘learner’ obedience dropped to 40%, when the ‘learner’ couldn’t be seen or heard all went to 450V, when the researcher gave over the phone instructions dropped to 20.5%
• Uniform: The experimenter is not wearing a laboratory coat obedience fell to 20%
• Personal control: When participants were allowed to choose the shock level, they tended to go lower; only 2.5% went to 450V
• Witnessing disobedience: 3 teachers, 2 are confederates, 1 refuses at 150V, and the other at 210V, only 10% of naïve teachers went to 450V mostly when researchers disagreed, and 1 said stop; all participants stopped
• Witnessing obedience: 2 obedient confederates' raised the level to 92.5%