Obedience
| For this section you need to be able to:
a Define what is meant by obedience. b Describe and evaluate Milgram’s (1963) study of obedience and one of Milgram’s ‘variation’ studies. c Describe and evaluate the Agency Theory of Obedience (Milgram, 1973). d Describe and assess the ethical issues arising from obedience research (as applied to the participants in the study and the wider issues for society). e Describe and evaluate one study of obedience from a country other than Milgram’s (USA). Suitable example: Meeus and Raaijmakers (1986) administrative obedience. Carrying out orders to use psychological-administrative violence. f Compare Milgram’s (1963) obedience study and one other from a country other than Milgram’s (USA) drawing cross-cultural conclusions. g Describe and evaluate the study by Hoffling et al (1966) in detail. |
Obedience
Obedience can be defined as complying to the demands of others, particularly those in positions of authority.
Milgram. S (1963) Behavioural Study of Obedience.
The aim of Milgram’s (1963) experiment was to investigate what level of obedience would be shown when participants were told by an authority figure to administer electric shocks to another person.
The participants consisted of 40 males aged between 20 and 50 years of age who were recruited by a newspaper and direct mail advertisement which asked for volunteers to participate in a study of memory and learning at Yale University.
Each participant turned up to the laboratory alone and was asked to draw a slip of paper from a hat to determine which role he would play. The draw was rigged so the participant was always the teacher and Mr. Wallace (the confederate) was always the learner.
The teacher (participant) and learner were taken to a room and in full view of the teacher (participant) the learner was strapped into the ‘electric chair’. The experimenter explained to the teacher (participant) that the straps were to prevent excessive movement while the learner was being shocked; the effect was to make it impossible for him to escape the situation. An electrode was attached to the learner’s wrist and electrode paste (cream) was applied ‘to avoid blisters and burns’. The participant (teacher) was told that the electrode was attached to the shock generator in the adjoining room. The participant (teacher) then heard the experimenter tell the learner ‘although the shocks can be extremely painful, they cause no permanent tissue damage’.
Milgram created a phoney ‘shock generator’ which in the 1960s looked very impressive and realistic. The phoney shock generator had 30 switches marked clearly in 15 volt increments from 15 to 450 volts.
The participant (teacher) was then seated in an adjacent room in front of the shock generator and asked to read a series of word pairs to the learner. The learner was asked to learn (memorise) these pairs. The participant (teacher) then tested the learner by giving him one of the words in a pair along with four other words. The learner had to indicate which of the four words had originally been paired with the first word. The learner’s answer was communicated by pressing one of four switches which illuminated a light on top of the shock generator. If the answer was correct the participant (teacher) had to move onto the next word on the list, if the answer was wrong the participant had to tell the learner the correct answer and then the level of punishment that they were going to give them. They would then press the first switch on the shock generator (15 volts). For every subsequent incorrect answer the participant was required to move one switch up the scale of shocks (15 volts higher than the voltage of the last shock delivered).
If the participant asked advice from the experimenter, whether it be; ‘should I continue administering shocks’, or some other indication that he did not wish to go on, he would be given encouragement to continue with a sequence of standardised ‘prods’ such as “Please continue” or “The experiment requires that you continue”
All 40 of the participants obeyed the experimenter and delivered shocks up to 300 volts. 26 of the 40 participants delivered shocks up to the maximum 450 volts.
After the maximum shock had been administered, the participant was asked to continue at this level until the experimenter eventually called a halt to the proceedings, at which point many of the obedient participants heaved sighs of relief or shook their heads in apparent regret.
During the study many participants showed signs of nervousness and tension. Participants sweated, trembled, stuttered, bit their lips, groaned, dug fingernails into their flesh, and these were typical not exceptional responses. Quite a common sign of tension was nervous laughing fits (14 out of 40 participants), which seemed entirely out of place, even bizarre. Full-blown uncontrollable seizures were observed for three participants
Milgram concluded that the most important factor determining obedience is the situation and he put forward a number of possible explanations for this high level of obedience. Including the fact that the experiment took place at the prestigious Yale University, that the participant believed that the experiment was for a worthy purpose and that the participant believed the victim had volunteered to be in the study and therefore has an obligation to take part even if the procedures become unpleasant.
Milgram variation study (the Bridgeport Experiment)
Milgram put forward a number of possible explanations for this high level of obedience. Including the fact that the experiment took place at the prestigious Yale University, that the participant believed that the experiment was for a worthy purpose and that the participant believed the victim had volunteered to be in the study and therefore has an obligation to take part even if the procedures become unpleasant.
To test some of these explanations Milgram carried out many more variations of his experiment.
For example in one variation (Milgram referred to this in 1974 as experiment 10) to his experiment Milgram altered the location from Yale University to a run-down office building in downtown Bridgeport, Connecticut. Participants believed that project was being run by a private research firm with no connection to Yale. In this setting the obedience rate was 47.5%, suggesting that the original location had played some part, but it was not a crucial factor.
Evaluation of the Milgram Obedience Studies
Agency Theory of Obedience (Milgram 1973)
Milgram developed his agency theory to explain the obedience demonstrated in his famous experiments.
Milgram believed that we switch between two states – the agentic state and the autonomous state.
The agentic state occurs when people act as if they were simply an agent for authority, they do what the job requires them to and what they do is not their choice but their duty. They take no responsibility for the consequences of their actions, and if these consequences are negative they might use the excuse of ‘following orders’ to explain their behaviour.
The autonomous state occurs when people act as if free to make their own choices, they have free will and control their own actions. They take responsibility for what they do.
Milgram stated that the situation determines which of these states we operate in. We are socialised to recognise, respect and to obey authority figures. Therefore we will do as they tell us when in a situation where legitimate authority is present because we become the agents of that authority. In fact we would find it hard not to obey even if we do not like what we are doing. This can lead to moral strain, which is the negative feeling caused by doing something we believe to be wrong but feel compelled to do because of the social situation.
Milgram explained that the agentic state has its origins in the socialisation process, whereby obedience becomes associated with rewards in infancy and this is further reinforced in the school years, leading to unquestioning obedience in adulthood.
He also explained that obedience can be seen as having survival value and that natural selection favours those creatures who fit into the social hierarchy and this explains why the behaviour was so prevalent in his studies.
Ethical Issues Arising from Obedience Research
The most common criticism of Milgram’s obedience research is concerned with its ethics:
Participants were deceived as to the exact nature of the study for which they had volunteered, and by making them believe they were administering real electric shocks to a real participant. However Milgram could not have found results that truly reflected the way people behave in real situations if he had not deceived his participants, all of whom were thoroughly debriefed afterwards.
It can also be argued that Milgram did not take adequate measures to protect his participants from the stress and emotional conflict they experienced. Milgram’s defence was that he, and the students and psychiatrists – who had been asked to predict the results of the first experiment – did not expect the results he obtained, and went on to ask whether such criticisms are based as much on the unexpected results as on the procedure itself.
It is possible that being involved in the experiment may have had a long-term effect on the participants. Before the experiment they might have considered themselves incapable of inflicting harm on another person unless the circumstances were extreme. Afterwards, this view of themselves was shattered. Milgram argued that such self-knowledge was valuable. A year after the experiments an independent psychiatrist interviewed 40 of the participants (many of whom had experienced extreme stress), and found no evidence of psychological harm or evidence of traumatic reactions.
In terms of the right to withdraw, it was good that Milgram stated at the start that the money paid to the participants was theirs regardless of whether they continued with the experiment. However, during the experiment the prods used suggested that withdrawal was not possible. This is ethically incorrect. Even so, we should consider whether the experiment would have been valid if the experimenter kept reminding the participant about his right to withdraw.
It is also worth noting that at the time Milgram conducted his research there were no ethical guidelines to breach. In fact it can be argued that Milgram’s obedience research was a stimulus for the setting up of the original ethical guidelines. It can also be argued that the benefits to psychology and society in general outweigh the costs the individual participants.
The situational approach proposed by agency theory can be seen to have wider ethical implications because it seems to remove personal responsibility from those who commit atrocities under pressure, thus offering excuses to people who follow authority even when they know it is morally wrong to do so. For example, Adolf Eichmann was often referred to as the ‘architect of the holocaust’. He occupied a high position in the Nazi regime and was selected for his good organisational skills which he used to arrange the deportation of Jewish men, women and children to ghettos and camps where they were subsequently mistreated and murdered. He was caught, charged, tried and subsequently hanged for war crimes in 1962. During his trial it became apparent that he was not some kind of monster but an ordinary man in an extraordinary situation. His defence was always that he was simply obeying orders. However, if this had been accepted then Agency could act as an excuse for committing morally reprehensible behaviour, allowing people to abdicate responsibility for their own actions. This clearly therefore has wider ethical implications for society in the way that it deals with people in this situation.
Meeus and Raaijmakers (1986)
The aim of this study was to test obedience requiring harm to be committed but in a more up-to-date way than used by Milgram and using psychological violence rather than physical violence.
A laboratory experiment was used to test 39 Dutch male and female participants aged 18-55 to see how obedient they were when asked to administer psychological harm in the form of 15 increasingly insulting remarks to a confederate/stranger who was applying for a job at a university.
The participants were a self selected sample recruited by newspaper advert asking for participants for a study on psychological stress and test achievement. They were paid $13 dollars.
Like Milgram the researchers used a naïve participant to interact with the confederate. The participants were told to ignore the increasing objections raised by the applicant (confederate) and were told that they were helping the researcher with a project on stress.
They also completed two further variations; where the researcher was absent from the room when the stress remarks were to be delivered and one where there were two disobedient stooges.
The main results of the study was that 92% of the participants were fully obedient and delivered all 15 insults even though they said it was unfair and stated that they did not want to do it.
The variations, where a ‘rebel’ peer was absent and where the researcher left the room did bring about lower obedience. In the researcher absent condition36% were fully obedient and in the two disobedient stooges variation 16% were fully obedient.
Follow up questionnaires showed that the Pps did not like the baseline procedure and were upset by it. 73% believed it was real, 23% were unsure and 4 % believed it was a hoax. In the variations a higher percentage believed the set up (83%).
When asked who was responsible for the participant’s behaviour in the baseline condition, 45% of the experimental group blamed the experimenter, 33% thought they were to blame themselves and 22% blamed the applicant! In the control group a similar percentage blamed the experimenter but more of them blamed themselves and slightly fewer blamed the applicant.
Meeus and Raaijmakers concluded that high levels of obedience are to be expected even 20 years after the original Milgram’s original study and that obedience in Holland (perhaps a more liberal culture than the US) is in fact higher than it was in the US in the 60s.
They noted that participants seem more likely to comply with orders to deliver psychological harm than physical harm, possibly because the consequences are not so obvious and immediate as hearing someone screaming in pain.
Evaluation of Meeus and Raaijmakers’ study
Comparing Milgram (1963) and a non-US study of obedience (Meeus and Raajmakers (1986)
Milgram (1963) and Meeus and Raaijmakers (1986) are similar in that they both aimed to study obedience to authority and to explore the circumstances under which obedience decreased.
However, Meeus and Raaijmakers aimed to create an experimental set-up which utilised a form of punishment which was more up to date and closer to real life experiences for the participants. They asked their participants to deliver verbal insults which could result in psychological harm whereas Milgram asked his participants to deliver electric shocks which they believed could result in pain/physical harm.
As Meeus and Raaijmakers used a punishment more in keeping with real life experiences the study could be said to have higher ecological validity than Milgram’s findings.
Milgram’s study took place in the Sixties in America whereas Meeus and Raaijmakers study took place in Holland in the Eighties.
Milgram’s study included some ambiguity about whether the electric shocks were dangerous as the voltmeter was labelled with words such as ‘danger: severe shock’ whereas the experimenter said that the shocks were ‘painful but would cause no permanent tissue damage’; Meeus and Raaijmakers study did not include such ambiguity and this could be seen as a strength of the set up over Milgram’s.
Both Milgram and Meeus and Raaijmakers used a standardised procedure to minimalise confounding variables, thus increasing the internal validity of both studies, this said a small minority of participants in both studies suggested in follow up interviews that they thought the set up was a hoax and thus the internal validity has been questioned for both studies.
Both studies used a similar size of sample of male participants and both used the same sampling technique; volunteer samples of readers of local newspapers. This means both studies are subject to sample bias and therefore the findings may lack generalisability.
Both studies has a similar set up in that participants were asked to deliver a command series of graded punishments, electric shocks in Milgram’s study and verbal insults in Meeus and Raaijmakers.
In Milgram’s original study he had no control group and the study was in fact a controlled observation whereas Meeus and Raaijmakers did have a control group who were allowed to deliver insults at a time of their own choosing and stop when they wanted to. This is a strength of Meeus and Raaijmakers over Milgram’s study as the control group provides a baseline for comparison. It was only in a subsequent replication that Milgram allowed his participants to choose the voltage of the shocks they delivered.
In both studies participants were paid a nominal fee for their participation and it has been noted that this may have affected the levels of obedience shown despite the participants being told they that they would still receive their payment whether they withdrew or not.
In both studies a series of verbal prods were applied by the researcher should the participant object to their participation in the study and show signs of wishing to drop out. This meant that both studies can clearly be seen to be studying the effects of an authority figure on individual behaviour however for the same reason both studies could be seen as unethical as the verbal prods compromise the participants understanding of his right to withdraw. Likewise, both studies used deception and lacked informed consent which was dealt with through thorough debriefing. However, Meeus and Raaijmakers study could be seen as more unethical as at the time of Milgram’s study in America, ethical guidelines were not as clear as they were in the late 80s in Europe.
Both studies revealed high levels of obedience, although the percentage of complete obedience (carrying out the entire command series) was higher in the Dutch study at 92% compared with 65% in America. In Milgram’s study levels of opposition were higher, in that participants argued more with the researcher, asking him to be checked and so on whereas in Meeus and Raaijmakers participants did enter into discussion but were less agitated and showed greater indication of moral strain thought this likely to be due to the physical harm they believed they were administering as opposed to psychological harm in Meeus and Raaijmaker’s study.
Meeus and Raaijmaker’s study had more detailed findings than Milgram’s original 1963 study as they conducted an independent measures design study with two more groups which replicated some of Milgram’s later variations studies, authority figure absent and the effect of disobedient stooges.
Both studies seem to support Agency Theory (Milgram, 1974) in that participants blamed the experimenter for their actions.
Both studies are easily replicable due to the standardised procedures and instructions to participants and this increase reliability of the findings.
It would appear that the high levels of obedience seen in Milgram’s (1963) study (65%) are not culture, or indeed, era-bound, as even higher levels (92%) were seen in a study of obedience conducted in Holland by Meeus and Raaijmakers (1986).
This suggests that obedience may be something which is found to a high extent across other cultures and therefore may support the idea that obedience is a prevalent quality as it has survival value, supporting an evolutionary explanation.
However, this conclusion should be questioned as the procedure used by Meeus and Raaijmakers differed from Milgram’s in one fundamental way, despite the many similarities, they asked their participants to administer psychological rather than physical harm and it is possible that participants were more obedient because this command induced lower levels of moral strain. Also another fundamental difference was that Meeus and Raaijmakers’ participants had consented to deliver insults (harm) whereas Milgram’s had not and this difference, which made the former study more ethical in some ways, also meant that that the levels of obedience may have been higher as the participants felt more obliged to continue as they had entered into the study in full knowledge of what they were being asked to do.
Also when drawing cross-cultural conclusions regarding levels of obedience one should be mindful that the two studies were conducted in two different eras as well as well as two different cultures and therefore the observed obedience in Meeus and Raaijmakers’ study may be a product of changing social norms over time as well as culture. Also both cultures could in fact be seen as fairly similar as both are certainly more individualist than collectivist. This said the highest levels of obedience observed in any Milgram replication were seen in Jordan (Shanab and Yahya, 1977) however this study again cannot be used to make direct cross cultural comparisons with Milgram since the study differed with regard to another variable as well as culture, and this was age since the participants were school children.
Hofling et. al (1966)
Hofling (1966) aimed to discover whether nurses would comply with an instruction which would involve them having to infringe both hospital regulations & medical ethics. The intention was to test the strength of the doctor-nurse relationship, regarding how far a nurse would go to comply with doctor’s orders against their own code of professional conduct.
Identical boxes of capsules were placed in 22 wards of both public & private psychiatric hospitals in the USA. The capsules were, in fact placebos (consisting of glucose). But the containers were labelled ‘5mg capsules of Astroten’. The label also indicated that the normal dose is 5mg with a maximum daily dose of 10mg. While the nurse was on duty, a ‘doctor’ (a confederate ‘Dr Smith from the psychiatric department’) instructed the nurse by telephone, to give 20mg of Astroten to his patient, a Mr Jones, as he was in a desperate hurry and the patient needed the capsules. He said that he would come in to observe Mr Jones in 10 minutes time & that he would sign the authorisation when he got there. A real doctor was posted nearby, unseen by the nurse, and observed what the nurse did following the telephone call. Hofling also included a questionnaire study where nurse participants were asked what they thought they would do in the same situation. He asked this questionnaire to student and graduate nurses.
There was a dramatic difference between the answers given in the questionnaire and the actual behaviour observed on the wards. In the questionnaire 10/12 graduates said they would not have followed the order and 7 mentioned reasons including the dosage discrepancy, hospital policy and need for written permission. All 21 of the student nurses said they would not have followed the order. However, the reality was that 95% or 21/22 nurses obeyed without hesitation even though when questioned later 11 said that they had noticed the dosage discrepancy. Many mentioned that emergency calls like this were quite common, no one asked for written consent but most asked the doctor to hurry. Only one nurse questioned the doctor’s identity and why he was on their ward.
Although the nurses believed that they would not obey a doctor unquestioningly if they were ordered to do something that breached regulations and endangered patients, it appeared that in fact they did just that. Hofling concluded that the nurses were not functioning as ‘intelligence’ on the ward and were merely deferring to the doctors. Whilst efficiency and trust are important qualities, the nurses should also have trusted their own judgement as they were putting patients at risk when behaving in this way. Nurses need to be trained to question doctors but in a courteous way without feeling disloyal. Doctors need to be made aware of the destructive outcomes of their perceived authority which may disempower others from thinking for themselves.
Evaluation of the Hofling et al. (1966) study