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Psychology of Communication: social influence
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Psychology of Communication: social influence
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The classic study of obedience to authority was conducted by Milgram in 1974. [It's since been pointed out to me by Simon Sheppard that 1974 was the date of publication of Milgram's book, ahereas the experiments were probably carried out in 1961-1962. You might also like to take a look at Simon's intriguing site, www.heretical.com, which features essays on Nazism and a wide range of other curious subjects]. In Milgram's experiment ordinary men and women were brought in to participate in what they were told was a study of memory. When they arrived at the laboratory they were told that they were to play the rôle of teacher. They had to read a series of word pairs to another person on the other side of a partition. Then they were to test the learners memory by giving him a word and asking him to select the correct matching word from four alternatives. Each time the learner made an error, they were to give him an electric shock by pressing a lever. The learner was strapped into an electric chair while they watched. The teachers had in front of them a row of levers labelled from 15 to 450 volts and switches labelled from slight shock to Danger: severe shock to the final 'XXX'. They were instructed to move one level higher on the shock generator each time the learner made an error. There were not of course any shocks.
The 'learner' had been specially trained for the experiment. As the shock level increased, so the learner could be heard protesting through the adjoining wall. He then began to shout. At 300 volts he began to kick the wall and at the highest level he no longer made any noise at all, not even answering the questions. Many of the teachers objected, pleading with the experimenter not to go on. The experimenter did not threaten them in any way, but encouraged them to continue by telling them that it was absolutely necessary. 65% of the subjects went all the way to the maximum level and none of them stopped before 300 volts.
The obedience to authority depends in the case of Milgram's experiment on a variety of generally accepted social norms. First, the subjects had replied to a newspaper ad when they signed up as Milgram's subjects. When they did so, they in effect made a contract with the experimenter, implicitly agreeing to co-operate with him and follow his instructions.
In Milgram's experiment there is also the problem of being impolite. It might not sound especially important, but most of us are unwilling to break the generally accepted rules of social etiquette. In the case of Aschs experiment, daring to disagree with the group meant telling them they were a bunch of wallies. In Milgram's experiment disagreeing with the experimenter meant telling him he was incompetent or immoral.
There is a further problem for the teachers in Milgram's experiment, namely that the shocks get progressively worse. Once you have accepted the idea of giving another human being the lowest shocks on a scale which you can clearly see progresses through to potentially lethal levels, then there's no obvious stopping point. Wherever you stop, you have to admit to having been wrong to start in the first place. Presumably most of Milgram's 'teachers' would not have seen themselves as brutal or cruel and yet they were giving shocks and causing intense pain to someone. How could they make this experience consistent with their values and beliefs and with their self-image? The evidence is that people tend to disregard or reinterpret the experience which conflicts with their self-image. So in this case, the 'teachers' might have been disregarding the experience or they might perhaps have been reinterpreting it so that it was not primarily an experience of causing another person pain, but, rather, an experiment for the good of science. (For further comment on consistency, see the section on Consistency Theory.)
There was also clear evidence from Milgram's study that the presence of the experimenter helped to increase obedience. When he left the room, obedience dropped from 65% to 21%. The same thing happens in classrooms, offices and factory floors as well.
The buffer in the Milgram experiment was the wall between teacher and learner. Milgram showed that if the teacher was personally required to hold the learners hand on the shock plate, then obedience dropped from 65% to 40%. It seemed that the more direct the interaction between the teacher and the learner, the lower the obedience would be. Milgram tested this theory in reverse by conducting an experiment where the teacher was required to pull a lever which would cause another person to administer the shocks. In this case the obedience level went up from 65% to 93%.
You could compare this with Nazi Germany, a state with a well-ordered hierarchical state bureaucracy, the Party members ordering the Reichskristallnacht and overseeing the implementation of the Nuremberg race laws would have been similarly isolated from the victims of their policies. Most of them would have seen themselves, as did Adolf Eichmann, who organised the slaughter of millions of Jews, as state functionaries simply doing a job, just - as he put it - following orders.
If the individual accepts an ideology which is represented by the person in charge, then the individual's actions are legitimate.
Milgram's experiment has been criticised because the prestige of science - represented by the display of technology, the clean white rooms, the experimenter in his white coat - led the subjects to behave in a way they never would do in real life. To test that hypothesis, Milgram actually conducted the experiments again in a set of run-down offices with no association with the prestigious Yale University. Obedience dropped from 65% to 48%.
But to criticise Milgram's experiments as artificial on those grounds is to miss the fundamental point that the subjects were involved in real life. Scientific experiments are part of the world we live in. It is precisely our modern ideology of science that legitimated the subjects' actions. Science is modern, progressive, objective, dispassionate, prestigious. It was those values which attach to science and the scientist that made the subjects behaviour acceptable to them. Swap that ideology for the ideology of the German master race and you have unquestioning obedience to Nazism. Such obedience would not need to be based in any sense on brutal power relationships, but would rest on the voluntary surrender of the individual's independent moral judgement. That would be subordinated to the central value system of the larger social organization. One doesn't need to look so far afield as Nazi Germany, either. If the dominant ideology emphasizes such values as individualism, self-reliance, 'efficicency', social Darwinism, then profiteering, self-enrichment, greed and disregard for the common good are all legitimate.
Conformity
Deindividuation
Diffusion of responsibility
Minority influence
Rebellion
Power of social rôles
Conflict resolution
Groups and Teams
Mass Media Effects Research
Political Propaganda and Persuasion
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