"Psychologists have argued that much research into obedience tells us little about events in the real world" To what extend can finding from obedience research be applied beyond the research setting?

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Aneil Patel                 Psychology

“Psychologists have argued that much research into obedience tells us little about events                         in the real world”

To what extend can finding from obedience research be applied beyond                                                  the research setting?

Obedience is compliance with an order issued by an authority figure. Obedience is not as general as conformity, it is related to specific instruction from another person. Obedience refers to a type of social influence whereby somebody acts in response to a direct order from another person. There is also the implication that the person receiving the order is made to respond in a way that they would not otherwise have done without the order.

Milgram (1963) proposed the agentic theory why people obey, “When we act as the agent of someone in authority we find it easy to deny personal responsibility for our actions.” Basically he is saying we just follow orders or we are just doing out job. Obedience to authority is deeply fixed from early childhood when we are taught orders or just doing our job.

Stanley Milgram was from a Jewish background and he was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing killing for example, the Germans in WWII.

Milgram mislead 40 male volunteer participants into thinking they were giving gradually increasing electric shocks to another participant, the actor during a word association task.                                                                

The ‘real’ participant acted as the ‘teacher’ and the ‘learner’ was in fact an actor. In the condition, the learner was in another room, with no voice contact with the teacher. After each wrong answer an electric shock was delivered (although none were really given) with an increase of 15 volts each time up to 450 volts. All 40 participants continued to at least 300-volts level and 65% continued to the full 450 volts.

Milgram extended his research to explore the different situational factors that led participants to obey or disobey. He found that the closer the ‘teacher’ was to the ‘learner’, the more likely they were to refuse the experimenter’s command to deliver the shocks. Milgram also discovered that obedience levels were lower when the experimenter was not physically present and gave orders over the telephone.

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Milgram’s research was fiercely criticised, he was criticised on two main counts. Firstly his work was not a valid research study, in that the deception had not worked (experimental validity) and the study had little relevance outside of the experimental setting (ecological validity). Secondly Milgram’s work was attacked on ethical grounds, saying he deceived people and caused unreasonable distress. Volunteers often showed extreme stress – sweating, stammering and even having uncontrollable fits. The APA decided that Milgram’s was ethically acceptable.

This was another study carried out on obedience. The experiment was conducted by Hofling and his colleagues. ...

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