Obedience Flashcards
Obedience.
A form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order.
Milgram (1963) - aim.
To investigate whether ordinary people would obey an unjust order from an authority figure and inflict pain and injure an innocent person.
Milgram (1963) - sample.
40 male American ppts recruited through a newspaper advert.
Volunteers and paid $4.50 to take part.
Milgram (1963) - method.
Invited to a lab at Yale Uni, where they met the experimenter and another ppt (both confederates).
‘Drew lots’ to see who would be assigned to each role w/in study but was fixed so real ppt was the teacher and was instructed by the experimenter to adminster an electric shock of increasing strength to the learner. every time he made a mistake when recalling a list of word pairs.
Learner was strapped by arms into a chair in room next door and a shock was demonstrated to the teacher to make ‘shocks’ appear real.
Each time learner got answer wrong teacher required to adminsiter an electric shock of increasingly voltage, starting at 15 to 450 volts.
At 300 (intense shock) the learner would bang on wall and complain.
After 315, no further responses heard from learner. Experiment continued until either ppt refused to continue or max level reached.
If the teacher tried to stop the experiment, the experimenter would respond with a series of verbal prods.
Milgram (1963) - findings.
All ppts went to at least 300 volts.
65% continued to the max level.
Ppts showed signs of distress and tension.
Milgram (1963) - conclusion.
Under the right situational circumstances, ordinary ppl will obey.
Unjust orders from someone perceived to be a legitimate authority figure.
Strength - Milgram’s findings were replicated in a French documentary that was made about reality TV.
The documentary (Beauvois et al 2012) focused on a game show made especially for programmes. The ppts in the 'game' believed they were contestants in a pilot episode for a new show called Le Jeu de la Mort (The Game of Death); were paid to give (fake) electric shocks (ordered by presenter) to other ppts (actors) in front of a studio audience. 80% of ppts delivered the max shock of 460 volts to an apparently unconscious man; their behaviour was almost identical to that of Milgram's ppts - nervous laughter, nail-biting, and other signs of anxiety. This supports Milgram's original findings of obedience to authority and demonstrates that the findings were not just due to special circumstances.
Limitation - It broke several ethical guidelines.
Milgram deceived his ppts as they believed that they were taking part in a study on how punishment affects learning, rather than on obedience. They were also deceived by the rigging of the role allocation that was in fact pre-determined.
Due to the nature of the task, Milgram didn’t protect the ppts from psychological harm, since many of them showed signs of real distress during the experiment and may have continued to feel guilty following the experiment, knowing that they could have harmed another human being.
Some critics of Milgram believed that these breaches could serve damage to the reputation of psychology and jeopardise future research.
Limitation - Milgram’s conclusions about blind obedience may not be justified.
Alex Haslam et al (2014) showed that Milgram’s ppts obeyed when the experimenter delivered the first three verbal prods.
However, every ppt who was given the fourth prod without exception disobeyed.
According to social identity theory, ppts in Milgram’s study only obyed when they identified with the scientific aims of research. When they were ordered to blindly obey an authority figure, they refused.
This shows that social learning theory may provide a more valid interpretation of Milgram’s findings, especially as Milgram himself suggested that ‘identifying with the science’ is a reason for obedience.
Limitation - Milgram’s procedure may not have been testing what he intended to test.
(includes counterpoint).
Milgram reported that 75% of his ppts believed the shocks were genuine. However Orne and Holland (1968) argued that the ppts behaved as they did because they didn’t really believe in the set up, so they were ‘play-acting’. Gina Perry’s (2013) research confirms this; she listened to tapes of Milgram’sppts and reported that only about half of them believed the shocks were real. 2/3 of ppts were disobedience. This suggest that ppts may not have been responding to demand characteristics, truing to fulfil the aims of the study.
However, Sheridan and King (1972) conducted a study using a procedure, similar to Milgram’s. Ppts gave real shocks to a puppy in response to orders from an experimenter. Despite the real distress of the anima;, 54% of the men and 100% of women gave what they thought was a fatal shock. This suggests that the effects in Milgram’s study were genuine because ppl behaved obediently even when the shocks were real.
Limitation - It lacks ecological validity.
Milgram conducted a laboratory study, which is very different from real‐life situations of obedience. In everyday life, we often obey far more harmless instructions, rather than giving people electric shocks. As a result, we are unable to generalise his findings to real‐life situations of obedience and cannot conclude that people would obey less severe instructions to the same degree. However, Milgram counters this claim,
stating that the laboratory can reflect wider authority relationships seen in real‐life situations. For example, Hofling et al. (1966) found that nurses were surprisingly obedient to unjustified instructions from a doctor in a hospital setting.
Situational variables.
Focus on external factors that affect the likelihood that someone will obey orders.
Proximity, location, uniform.
Proximity.
Situational variable.
The teacher could hear the learner but not see (original).
In same room, obedience dropped from 65% to 40%.
Touch proximity - teacher forced learner’s hand on to an electroshock plate if refused to place there himself; obedience dropped to 30%.
Remote instruction - experimenter left room and gave instructions over phone; obedience reduced to 20.5%. Ppts often pretended to give shocks.
Explanation for proximity.
Decreased proximity allows people to psychologically distance themselves from the consequences of their actions.
Location.
A run-down office block - obedience fell to 47.5%.
University environment gave study legitimacy and authority; ppts were more obedient because perceived that experimenter shared legitimacy and obedience was expected.
Obedience still high in office block because ppts perceived the ‘scientific nature’ of procedure.
Uniform.
Mostly experimenter wore a white lab coat - status.
Replaced experimenter in normal everyday clothes pretending to be an ordinary member of public - was confederate. Obedience dropped to 20%, demonstrating the dramatic power that uniform can have on levels of obedience.
Explanation of uniform.
Uniforms encourage obedience because they are widely recognised symbols of authority.
We accept that someone in a uniform is entitled because their authority is legitimate; someone without a uniform has less right to expect our obedience.
Strength - Other studies have demonstrated the influence of situational variables on obedience.
In a field experiment in NYC, Bickman (1974) had 3 confederates dressed in diff outfits - a jacket and tie, a milkman’s outfit, and a security guard’s uniform.
The confederates individually stood in the street and asked passers-by to perform tasks - e.g. picking up rubbish. People were twice as likely to obey the security than the one in the jacket and tie.
This supports the view that a situational variable, such as uniform, does have a powerful effect on obedience.
Limitation - The ppts may have been aware the procedure was fake thus lowering internal validity.
Orne and Holland (1968) made the criticism of Milgram’s baseline study by pointing out its increased likeliness in variation due to extra manipulation of variables. A good example is a variation where the experimenter is replaced by a member of the public.
Even Milgram recognised the situation was contrived that some ppts may have worked out the truth. Therefore, in all of Milgram’s studies, it’s unclear whether the findings are genuinely due to the operation of obedience or because the ppts saw through the deception and just ‘play-acted (due to demand characteristics).
