Obedience Situational Variables

• Situational variables are features of the immediate, physical and social environment that influence behaviour.
• Dispositional variables is where behaviour is explained in terms of personality.
• Proximity refers to the physical closeness/distance of an authority figure to the person they are giving an order to.
• Location refers to the place where the order is issued and the status and or prestige associated with that location.
• Uniform refers to the outfit that is symbolic of their authority i.e police officers and judges, in which they are entitled to expect our obedience.
• Milgram's baseline study established a method he could repeat and vary. He found that situational variables might explain behaviour better than his original belief that obedience may be due to personality. In his research he identified several factors that he believed influenced the levels of obedience shown by p's, which were all related to the external circumstances rather than the personalities of the people involved.
• Proximity: Teacher to learner

  • Teacher and learner in same room - 40%
  • Teacher forces learners hand onto plate - 30% (touch proximity)
  • Experimenter gave orders by phone - 20.5% (remote proximity)
• Location:

  • Baseline study at Yale Uni - 65%
  • Run-down office - 47.5%
• Uniform:

  • Experimenter played by 'member of public' - 20%
• Decreased proximity allows people to psychologically distance themselves from the consequences of their own actions i.e when T and L were in different rooms the teacher was less aware of the harm they were causing so were more obedient.
• The prestigious uni environment gave Milgram's study legitimacy and authority, in which p's were more obedient, because they perceived that the experimenter showed this legitimacy and expected obedience. P's obedience was still quite high in the run block office because the p's perceived the scientific nature of the study.
• Uniform encouraged obedience because they are widely recognised symbols of authority
• Research support:

  Bushman carried out a study where a female researcher, dressed in police-style uniform, as a business executive or as a beggar, stopped people in the street and told them to give a male researcher change for an expired parking meter. hen she was in uniform 72% of the people obeyed but dropped to 48% as a business executive and to 52% as a beggar. When interviewed afterwards people claimed to have obeyed the women in uniform because she seem to have authority.
• Criticism:

  • Real behaviour was not being measured
  • Some people consider a situational perspective on the holocaust offensive because it removes personal responsibility from the perpetrators as suggesting that they were 'only obeying orders' implies that they were also victims of situational pressures and that anyone faced with a similar situation would have behave in the same way. It runs the risk of trivalising genocide.