Milgram & Situational Variables Affecting Obedience

• Milgram's Research

  Stanley Milgram sought an answer to the question of why such a high proportion of the German population obeyed Hitler's commands to murder over 6 million Jews as well as 5 million Romani, homosexuals, Poles and other social groups during the Second World War
• Milgram's thought

  One possible explanation was that Germans were different from other people in other countries, perhaps being more obedient (known as a dispositional explanation of obedience)
• Milgram's procedure (1963)

  1. 40 American men volunteered to take part in Milgram's study at Yale University, supposedly on memory

  2. When each volunteer arrived to take part, they were introduced to another participant (who was a confederate to Milgram)

  3. The two participants drew lots to see who would be the 'Teacher' (T) and who would be the 'Learner' (L)

  4. The draw was fixed, so the genuine participant was always the teacher and the confederate the learner

  5. An Experimenter (E) was also involved, who was also a confederate and was dressed in a grey lab coat

  6. One participant, the confederate, was asked to learn a set of word pairs and the teacher would test his knowledge

  7. They were placed in adjacent rooms and the teacher was positioned in front of a set of controls to administer electric shocks to the learner

  8. The teacher was instructed to punish the learner with a shock after each incorrect he gave

  9. When the teacher displayed a reluctance to injure the learner, they were encouraged to continue the procedure
• Milgram's results (1963)

  • 65% of participants went all the way up to 450 volts ('danger - severe shock')
  • 100% of participants went up to 300 volts ('intense shock')
  • Many of the participants showed signs of emotional distress e.g. shaking, sweating, groaning, seizures
• Milgram's conclusion (1963)

  Under the right conditions (e.g. the presence of a legitimate authority; the agentic state) people will commit acts of destructive obedience towards someone they have just met
• Situational factors


  May explain destructive obedience
• Situational variables affecting obedience

  • Proximity
  • Location
  • Uniform
• Proximity

  1. In Milgram's original procedure, the Teacher could hear the Learner but could not see him

  2. In the proximity variation, both were moved to the same room

  3. The obedience rate dropped from 65% to 40%

  4. In the touch proximity variation, the teacher then had to force the Learners hand onto the electroshock plate

  5. The obedience rate dropped further to 30%

  6. In the remote instruction variation, the experimenter left the room and gave instructions by telephone

  7. The obedience rate dropped to 20.5%
• Explanation: Proximity

  Decreased proximity allows people to psychologically distance themselves from the consequences of their actions, however, when they have to witness and be physically together, this becomes difficult
• Location

  1. Milgram conducted a variation in a run-down office block

  2. The obedience rate dropped to 47.5%
• Explanation: Location

  Participants were more likely to be obedient in the university environment as they perceived the experimenter had legitimate authority and obedience was expected
• Uniform

  1. In the uniform variation, the experimenter was called away and replaced by an 'ordinary member of the public', meaning they were not wearing the 'uniform' of a grey lab coat

  2. The obedience rate dropped to the lowest of all the variations to 20%
• Explanation: Uniform

  Uniforms are often associated as symbols of authority and therefore encourage obedience as those around them see them as legitimate authority figures
• Bickman (1974) conducted an experiment in New York where he had 3 confederates dress in different outfits, one wore a jacket and tie, one in a milkman uniform and the 3rd a security guards uniform
• The confederates stood on the street and asked passers-by to perform tasks such as picking up litter or lending money to someone for the parking meter
• They found people were twice as likely to obey the security guard compared to the other two confederates
• Meeus and Raaijmakers (1968) studied obedience in Dutch participants, participants were instructed to say stressful things in an interview to someone who was desperate for a job (and who was a confederate)
• 90% obeyed