milgram + bocchiaro

• Social Psychology

  • Assumption 1: Behaviour is affected by the actual, imagined or implied presence of other people
  • Assumption 2: Behaviour is affected by situational factors and social context
• Obedience


  • Following a direct order
  • A form of "social influence in which a person yields to explicit instructions or orders from an authority figure"
  • Behaving in the same way as the people around you
• Milgram's study was a controlled observation, not a lab experiment
• Milgram's participants were 40 males aged 20-50 from a range of jobs and backgrounds, who were self-selected volunteers
• The aim of Milgram's study was to investigate how obedient people would be to orders from a person in authority that would result in pain and harm to another person
• Milgram's procedure

  1. Teacher reads out word pairs to learner

  2. Learner has to memorise pairs

  3. Teacher administers shock for each wrong answer

  4. Shocks increase in voltage with each wrong answer
• The 'learner' was a confederate and the shocks were fake
• The experimenter used verbal prods to encourage the teacher to continue administering shocks
• After the study, participants were debriefed, informed their behaviour was normal, and 80% said they were glad they took part
• Milgram's results

  300 volts: 40 participants (100%)

  450 volts: 26 participants (65%)
• Milgram concluded that the majority of people are willing to follow destructive orders, and that obedience did not come easily but involved a conflict between obeying authority and not harming others
• Milgram believed participants operated in an agentic state when responding to the experimenter's legitimate authority
• Milgram's explanations for the high levels of obedience included the setting, the aim being worthwhile, the participants feeling obligated, and the shocks being portrayed as not dangerous
• Milgram made variations to the procedure to test factors that increase or decrease obedience
• Factors that increase obedience include greater distance between learner and teacher, and less impact of actions on learner
• Factors that decrease obedience include reducing the power or closeness of the experimenter, making the situation appear less respectable/scientific, and the presence of disobedient participants
• Milgram argued that "illusion is used when necessary in order to set the stage for the revelation of certain difficult-to-get-at-truths"
• Only 1.3% said that they wished they had not been involved
• Milgram concluded that most were happy that they had taken part after interviewing them one year later
• 3 seizures occurred, one so severe that the experiment had to be stopped
• Over 80% of participants said that they were happy to have taken part
• Milgram's study found varying levels of obedience in different countries: Holland, Germany and Austria were higher than Britain and Australia
• When the study was conducted with females, similar results were shown
• Disobedience

  Refusing to follow unethical instructions
• Milgram's participants, 35% disobeyed and didn't go up to the full 450v
• Whistleblower


  A worker who reports wrongdoing to authorities or the public
• Bocchiaro wanted to investigate who are the people that disobey or blow the whistle, why they choose the challenging moral path, what they are thinking and feeling, and if they have personal characteristics that differentiate them from those who obey
• Bocchiaro used a scenario-based experiment to investigate obedience, disobedience and whistleblowing, as it is more valid than a questionnaire
• Bocchiaro's aims were similar to Milgram's in terms of investigating ethically wrong instructions and disobedience/obedience, but different in terms of also investigating whistleblowing, accuracy of estimates, and dispositional factors
• Bocchiaro conducted a pilot study to ensure the procedure was credible and morally acceptable
• Bocchiaro's sample included 149 participants, 138 surveyed on how they think they would respond, and 92 took part in 8 pilot studies. Sample was from VU Uni in Amsterdam(ethnocentric). Paid 7 euros to partake.
• Bocchiaro's procedure

  1. Cover story about sensory deprivation study

  2. Participants instructed to write a statement to convince others to take part

  3. Opportunity to whistleblow by completing an ethics form

  4. Personality inventories (HEXACO-PI-R and Social Value Orientation) administered
• HEXACO-PI-R


  Measures 6 personality dimensions: Honesty/humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience
• Bocchiaro results

  • only 9% whistleblew
  • 77% obeyed.
  • 14% disobeyed.
• Bocchiaro conclusions

  • obedience is a natural tendency and whistleblowing is uncommon.
  • Situational factors more significant than dispositional.
• Milgram Conclusions

  • majority of people will obey destructive disorders.
  • people find the experience of obeying destructive disorders highly distressful.