Summary of the Class:
Today's class explored the psychological phenomenon of obedience to authority, particularly focusing on Stanley Milgram’s experiment from the 1960s, which demonstrated surprising levels of obedience among ordinary people when instructed by an authority figure. The class delved into why individuals obey extreme orders and the situational and dispositional factors affecting obedience.
Key Points from the Lecture:
Stanley Milgram's Experiment
- Objective: To understand why ordinary people follow orders leading to horrific consequences, originally inspired by Nazi wartime behaviors.
- Method: An advert was placed for a memory study, but the real test was designed to see how far participants would go in administering electric shocks to a learner when prompted by an authority figure.
- Roles: Participants were assigned as "teachers" and were instructed to shock a "learner" (actor) for incorrect answers, increasing shock severity over the session.
- Results: Shockingly, 65% of participants administered the maximum voltage shock (450 volts), and 100% administered shocks up to 300 volts despite visible signs of distress.
Explanations for Obedience
- Agentic State Theory: Proposes that people enter an agentic state where they see themselves as agents executing orders, hence absolving themselves from responsibility.
- Legitimacy of Authority: People are conditioned socially to recognize and respond to authoritative figures with legitimacy derived from societal structures, uniforms, and settings.
Factors Influencing Obedience (Milgram’s Variations)
- Proximity: Reduced obedience when authority figures were physically distant or instructions given by phone (dropped to 21%).
- Location: Moving the experiment from Yale (a high-status setting) to a rundown office block caused obedience to drop to 47.5%.
- Uniform: When the authority figure (wearing a lab coat) was replaced by an ordinary person in regular clothes, obedience rates fell to 20%.
Evaluating Obedience and Authority
- Methodological Criticisms: Issues of ecological validity, possible detection of the experimental setup by participants, and gender bias as the original sample consisted entirely of males.
- Ethical Concerns: The experiment inflicted stress and emotional distress on participants, which raises significant ethical concerns despite the insights gained into human behavior.
Dispositional Explanations
- Authoritarian Personality: Introduced by Adorno, this theory suggests that individuals with a particular personality profile (highly respectful of authority and dismissive toward inferiors) are more likely to obey authority.
Additional Research Findings
- Supporting Studies: Various experiments have supported or expanded on Milgram’s findings, including real-world settings where authority was questioned, the influence of uniforms in authoritative compliance, and the disturbing obedience observed even when real harm was inflicted (e.g., Sheridan and King’s puppy experiment).
Conclusion
Today’s class provided a comprehensive overview of the dynamics of obedience to authority, highlighting both the power of situational contexts and inherent personality traits in shaping human behavior under authority. This not only enhances our understanding of historical events like the Holocaust but also offers insights into daily interactions and the upholding of social order.