Each button that the ‘teacher’ was supposed to press to administer a shock was labelled with warnings, which started with “slight shock” and culminated with XXX, a very ominous label! The teacher was given a real shock to ensure they thought the shocks were real and then questioning began. When the confederate answered incorrectly the teacher administered the shocks. Initially, Milgram, a group of graduate psychologists and actual psychologists were asked how many would continue to the highest level, they predicted 0.01%. This was very far from the actual findings with 65% being completely obedient.
This ‘complete obedience’ does not, however, give the full picture. Many of the participants demonstrated behaviour associated with high stress such as digging nails into their skin, stuttering and three people even suffered seizures. The role of the authority figure in this was crucial. When participants began to question whether they should continue they turned to the experimenter for guidance. He was already prepared with a pre-conceived set of ‘prods’ to ensure continuation and would say, if questioned on the health of the victim,
“Although the shocks maybe painful, there is no permanent tissue damage, so please go on.”
The question is, then, why did the participants continue when they knew what they were doing was wrong and in many cases were suffering themselves?
As already stated, it seems to be the situational factors that have induced these behaviours. Many variables must be taken into account, such as the prestigious location or progressive nature, the ‘foot in the door’ theory, of the experiment.
The prestigious location of the study, Yale University, is thought by many to have affected the behaviour of the participants making them more obedient. A popular view is that the prestige of the location of the experiment meant that those administering the shocks believed the experimenter had legitimate authority over them. This would seem to parallel the perceived legitimate authority that policemen/women hold over us in the outside world. Just as the participants obeyed the experimenter, we obey the police. Milgram took account of this factor and in one of over twenty variations on the original experiment he relocated the experiment to a rundown office block in Bridgetown, Conneticut. This relocation saw complete obedience fall to 47.5% which, although not massive, does show a marked reduction.
Another theory of the perception of legitimate authority is that participants change their self-perception from being autonomous to being in what Milgram described as the ’agentic state’. The participant perceives himself as an ‘agent of an external authority’ (Eysenck) and as such can justify his actions by transferring responsibility further up the social hierarchy.
External symbols such as uniforms, badges, etc. can induce a feeling that the person wearing them has legitimate authority. In Milgrams study the experimenter wore a lab coat. A study outside of the laboratory conducted by Bickman(1974) found that 80% of people would obey actors in a guards uniform when asked to pick up a coin opposed to only 40% when asked by people in normal clothes. This is a significant finding and is similar to Milgrams idea that people with perceived legitimate authority are obeyed more frequently than those without. Milgram, in a variation study, had the experimenter appear to be just an ordinary person (i.e. no lab coat) and complete obedience fell to just 20%. Another study by Bushman, in 1984, found that actors in fire-fighters uniforms were obeyed more frequently than those in civilian attire when ordered to give someone money, despite the order having little to do with the role that the uniform portrayed. Recent research, conducted outside of the laboratory emphasises just how ecologically significant Milgrams findings are. Brief, Dukerich and Doran(1991) found that 77% of students would act on what they thought the chair of the board wanted, even if the decision was ethically unsound e.g. Administer a potentially lethal drug. Brief et al. found similar findings when looking at employees. Many were prepared to diminish the qualifications of Afro-Americans if they believed the company president wanted a white person for the job.
Zimbardos prison study looked at the perceived roles of prisoners and guards. He found that, similarly to Milgram, it was the situation in which the people found themselves and not the characters of the guards that induced the behaviour of the participants.
A further factor that Milgram believed to be important to obedience is the diffusion of responsibility. Hamilton (1978) found that when participants are told that they are responsible for what they are doing obedience is significantly reduced. In one of Milgrams experiments the teacher is paired with a confederate who is administering the shocks while the participant just reads word pairs. In this situation complete obedience was very high with 92.5% of participants being completely obedient! Diffusion of responsibility is what Milgram believes happened in Nazi Germany. People are quite happy to obey authority if they believe they are not being held responsible and eventually the responsibility is passed up the line until there is just one person responsible. In the case of Nazi Germany everyone said they were just following orders. Adolph Eichman, who had been responsible for the establishment of the death camps stated this, nevertheless he was hung for genocide. Milgram observed that when the experimenter said ‘I’m responsible for what goes on here’, the participants seemed relieved and less stressed by the experience.
Proximity was another important variable that affects obedience to authority. Milgram carried out three variations on the theme of proximity and when the learner’s plight was most obvious, when the teacher had to physically place the hand of the learner on a shockplate, obedience fell to its lowest level, just 30%. This change in obedience is hard to account for, as the teacher’s post-experiment assessment of pain, measured on a scale of 1-14, was always very similar. Milgram suggests several mechanisms that cause close proximity to be problematic to the teachers. Empathic cues, where the teacher can see the pain and respond empathetically. This is often given as a justification when soldiers say that bombing places is much easier than shooting someone, despite bombing wreaking more havoc and destruction. The remoteness of an aeroplane allows the soldier to remain emotionally detached from the reality of his actions. Another of Milgrams mechanisms is that of narrowing the cognitive field, which allows the teacher to put the learners plight out of mind. This becomes impossible when the learner is within sight and the decision to press the button becomes a moral judgement. ‘Reciprocal fields’ is the idea that seeing the suffering induces feelings of shame or guilt, another mechanism, which causes obedience levels to drop.
Incipient group formation is the idea that when the victim is in the other room he is isolated and the teacher is left alone with the experimenter meaning they are drawn closer, he is an outsider psychologically and physically. However, when the learner is in close proximity the teacher has an ally with whom he can resist the teacher; thus obedience levels fall.
This is a similar idea to that of social support. Milgram found that when, in later experiments, the teacher was given social support and the support refused to obey the experimenter, only 10% of the teachers were completely obedient. This ‘demonstrates conformity counteracting the effects of obedience’ (Gross). This explanation shows why obedience fell and can certainly tell us something about why people obey authority outside of the lab. If social influence can reduce obedience to authority then it can work in the opposite way also, influencing the person to obey authority if the group so desires. So if to obey the police is seen as a social norm and the majority conform to the laws, then people will conform with society and obey these laws themselves. Asch’s research into conformity looks at this topic in greater detail but has similar findings.
Acquired behaviour disposition is the idea that we learn to be aggressive to things at a distance to us rather than close, an evolutionary mechanism, because its safer. Phenomenal unity of act is a further reason why people obey authority. Milgram believes that people don’t assess their actions in light of their consequences because they can’t see them. When they can see the victim they can correlate the action and consequences and so it has more impact and stops the teacher from continuing.
A further justification is the theory that Gilbert (1981) proposes. This is the ideas that Milgrams subjects got ‘sucked’ in by the incremental nature of the demands. The experiment started off seemingly harmless and concluded with the volunteers undertaking potentially deadly shocks to strangers. Milgram suggests this behaviour is caused by not knowing how to disobey. By attempting to disobey they may appear impolite. There’s also the consideration that by saying that what they are doing half way through is wrong they would be admitting to being wrong in the first place or may imply that the experimenter is incompetent. It seems very hard to draw a line on when its right to shock someone and when its wrong.
This spiralling effect could be given as a justification as to how the final solution was conceived. Logic will say that if it’s ok to kill someone because of his or her race then it must be ok to kill that entire race. If shooting is then too slow who’s to say it’s wrong to kill that race in a mass exodus. The lines become blurred and it may appear difficult to see what’s right and what isn’t.
It seems that having looked at the research and compared it with Milgrams findings and theories, Milgrams experiments do tell us quite a lot about why people obey authority outside of the lab. Milgram has proposed ideas that suggest why people behave in certain ways such as the prestige factor and much of this has been related to situations outside of the lab. However, a very large factor that one cannot replicate in the laboratory is the social consequence that disobeying authority could induce. Its true to say that if the participants really did believe they were shocking the learners, and the evidence implies that they did believe this, they probably assumed that they wouldn’t have been held responsible for their actions if serious injury had been caused. In the outside world people don’t have this safety net, even to a great extent in the army, the My Lai case being a fine example of this. Despite following orders the perpetrator who killed the innocent people was held to account, despite claiming he was only following orders. People, instead, assess whether or not to obey authority by weighing up the pro’s and con’s involved in the risk. The example of copying CD’s on your PC is a good example. It’s common knowledge that this contravenes copyright law but having assessed the risks most people will disobey authority and copy the disk anyway.
Research by Hofling(1966) et al. that was used to study obedience in medical settings is often cited as having similar findings as Milgram and as having high ecological validity; however, the study has been criticised for being the opposite. A drug was placed in hospital cabinets and nurses were telephoned and asked, by someone they thought was a doctor, to administer the drug, over the recommended dosage, without written permission by a doctor they didn’t know. Of the drug issued (a placebo) the nurses had no knowledge, they had no opportunity to seek assistance from their peers and were taking orders from someone they didn’t know, all very unlikely scenarios. The study was replicated by Rank and Jacobsen (1977) but with the aim of being more ecologically valid by using Valium (a popular drug), increased dosage was three times than recommended average and they were given the opportunity to speak to other nurses. In stark contrast to the Hofling study where twenty-one out of twenty two nurses would’ve administered the drug just two out of eighteen would have administered the Valium. This finding is also very different to the Milgram result.
It is also fair to say that if Milgram’s study was to be replicated today the prestige factor would be less viable as an excuse to obedience today. The laboratory is no longer a remote image; all of us have studied science at school and worked with technology. Science is a ‘real’ entity within our daily lives and it’s fair to say that one would certainly be less in awe of lab technology today than forty years ago and so the argument that the surroundings induced a sense of trepidation would be less acceptable.
The fact that the volunteers were self-selecting and being paid for their time may also have influenced their behaviour into conforming. The volunteer may have felt obliged to stay because of the money, despite initially being told that he was free to leave at any time. By offering himself for the project, one could also argue that the volunteer has contracted himself into staying and this unspoken contract may increase pressure to stay, fearing that they would have been wasting the experimenters time by not continuing.
Another view as to why people obeyed the experimenter is because they believed that the learner deserved the punishment for being so stupid. This goes against Milgrams idea that it’s the situation that induces the behaviour and not the personal characteristics. If the teacher punished because they believed the learner to be stupid, then it was their own conscience and mind making that decision. It’s true to say that using a mild-mannered ‘learner’, which is what Milgram did use, could have evoked bullying behaviour but, nevertheless, this behaviour would have come from the persons own characteristics and not been caused by the situation which the person was in.
A further problem with interpreting Milgrams findings is that they could be perceived in a completely different manner. Mixon (1972) for example believes that obedience was high because the participant trusted the experimenter not that they were influenced by their authority into losing all personal judgement.
Social impact theory also states that those around us provide cues as to how to behave. The Milgram experiment does then lack ecological validity as no cues are provided hence the unusually high obedience rates, which perhaps do not truly reflect the society’s general behaviour.
In conclusion, it would be true to say that Milgrams studies do give us insights as to why people obey authority outside of the laboratory. When compared to everyday life it’s clear to see the similarities and how situational pressures act upon us influencing the decisions we make, Milgram and Zimbardo both cited the situation not the disposition as the key to understanding why people obey authority, whether in a lab or not. The influences that Milgram proposes such as proximity may not encompass all external pressures, as the social impact theory demonstrates but they are extensive and provide us with greater understanding as to why people obey authority outside of the laboratory.
Milgram (1974) Obedience to Authority. (Harper & Row) ‘The essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another persons wishes, and he, therefore, no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions. Once the critical shift of view point has occurred in the person, all the essential features of obedience follow.’
Milgram 1974 Obedience to Authority (Harper & Row)‘A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority’.
