Obedience - Situational Factors (Milgram’s Variations) Flashcards
Location: obedience rate in brackets
Original: Yale university (65%)
Variation: run down, inner city, office building (47.5%)
Proximity
Original: teacher and experimenter in same room, learner in different room (65%)
Variation: teacher and learner in same room (40%)
Teacher puts learners hand on shock machine (30%)
Orders given over phone by experimenter (20.5%)
Uniform
Original: Mr Williams wears a grey/white lab coat
Variation: Mr Williams has to leave for “emergency” and is replaced by an experimenter in everyday clothes (20%)
reason for obeying/defiance on each of previous
Location: less legitimate/Respected than Yale (not as much trust in research)
Proximity: teacher can see pain inflicted, and is now fully responsible for it, pressure to obey is also removed due to over call orders
Uniform: loss of authority, now seen as equals
+ Bickman (ao3)
Obedience to uniform: three male experimenters dressed as milkman, security guard or civilian. People were 2x more likely to observe body guard than milkman. Shows situational factors such as uniform don’t effect the level of obedience.
+ Raaijmakers (ao3)
- Dutch ppts were ordered to say stressful comments to interviewees. They found a 90% obedience if authority figure was present and this dropped as proximity increased.
- demonstrates validity in obedience levels research across other cultures (not just America)
- however it’s still western not eastern so this should be considered when generalising.
- Demand characteristics (ao3)
- suggested variations were more likely to trigger suspicion because of extra manipulator e.g replacing experimenter with someone in everyday clothes.
- ppt is more likely to work out aim.
- offensive (ao3)
Mandela argues that situational variable largely oversimplify the causes of the holocaust and are extremely offensive to survivors. Milgram’s reasons for it e.g “I was just following orders” sound like justifying destructive behaviour.
