Obedience to Authority (14-Nov-2002)

Obedience is a kind of conformity, in that an individual changes his behaviour in response to implicit of explicit pressure from someone perceived to be in a position of authority.

Milgram 1960-1963

(See Milgram study sheet)

At the Nuremburg trials after WW2, a defence offered by war criminals was "I was only following orders". This led to the "Germans are different" hypothesis which suggested that the German people were unusually susceptible to following orders, and that the same situation would not have occurred in other countries.

Partly in an attempt to test this hypothesis, Stanley Milgram devised the "Obedience to Authority" experiment.

Milgram received much criticism for his experiments, some of which may have been due to the fact that the results had uncomfortable implications. However, it is arguable that Milgram did break several of the British Psychological Society's ethical stated principles:

• Consent. Although Milgram's volunteers consented to be part of an experiment, this was not informed consent - that is, they didn't know the full nature of what they were letting themselves in for.
  Milgram argued that informed consent was not practical for this experiment. Instead, he used presumptive consent, which means that before the real volunteers are enlisted, a sample of people is asked their opinion on the acceptability of the experiment. These people obviously do not take part, but their views are taken into account. See Book 3, p. 188
• Deception. Obviously, participants in Milgram's study were not aware of what was really going on, and so it could be argued that they were deceived.
  Again, given the nature of the experiment, this was arguably unavoidable. Milgram essentially claims here that the ends justify the means, citing the fact that almost none of the participants subsequently felt upset at having been part of the experiment
• Withdrawal from the experiment. It is not clear that participants in this experiment understood that they had the freedom to withdraw from the procedure. Indeed when they did voice their unease, they were told "you must continue".
  The only defence for this is that, again, practically none of the participants said they regretted being in the experiment. However, Milgram couldn't have known this at the time.
• Protection of Participants. Many of the subjects in the experiment showed signs of severe stress, and one had a full-blown seizure.
  Milgram argued that he had not anticipated this type of reaction by subjects, but this argument is weakened given that he carried out the experiment several hundred times. Milgram did carry out follow-up studies a year after the experiments and concluded that no long-term psychological damage had been done, but again he didn't know this at the time. The best defence here is again that the end justifies the means.

Ultimately a value judgement has to be made as to the ethical issues surrounding an experiment. At the time of Milgram (and Zimbardo), there were no formal ethical guidelines of the type we have today, and it is doubtful whether those experiments would be allowed to take place now. Perhaps this is why there are fewer "ground-breaking" experiments than there were in the '60s and '70s.

Strengths of Milgram's experiment

Milgram's experiment has been shown to have ecological validity; that is to say the results he obtained do not appear to be restricted just to the experimental setting. Milgram himself conducted many of the experiments in an office block that had no apparent connection with the university. Subsequently, an experiment by Sheridan and King (1972) where women were asked to give electric shocks to a puppy obtained similar results, and Hofling (1966) conducted a study where nurses obeyed telephone instructions to administer an apparently harmful drug dose to a patient.

As Milgram's debriefing interviews showed, the participants believed that what they were doing was real. In other words there was a high degree of Experimental realism.

Although the initial set of participants to the study were drawn from a similar background (white American middle class males in the 1960's), Milgram did conduct a set of experiment with women, and subsequent experiments were performed in other countries at other times with more or less similar results. So the phenomenon appears to cross cultural boundaries.

What causes obedience?

• Agentic state means that an individual believes that he is acting without responsibility. In many cases participants to Milgram's study sought reassurance from the experimenter that the experimenter would assume responsibility for any harm that came to the "learner".
• Family. Growing up in an environment where parents make rules and give instructions leads to an inclination to follow "authority".
• Setting. Obedience was higher in the university setting, with an experimenter dressed up in a white lab coat.
• graduated commitment. The fact that the electric shocks went up in gradual stages is important. If there had been just one switch labelled 450v, then it is likely that obedience would have been less. Having obeyed once, it becomes harder for the subject to resist subsequent commands

References

1. Psychology: A New Introduction for A Level (2nd edition), Gross et al : P 126-133
2. Obedience to Authority, Milgram
3. The Individual in a Social World, Milgram

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