Understanding Obedience in Social Psychology

Hi again. So this is our lecture in social psychology on obedience. And obedience is following instructions, doing what you're told to do. Essentially, an authority figure tells you to do something and you do it. Now, this is not the same as conformity, right? Conformity, you chose, you decided to do what everyone else was doing for your own reasons. So obedience is like similar. but not the same right you're you're being told to do something and you do it oh didn't work okay so stanley milgram did it work oh sorry there we go uh stanley milgram uh from yale university conducted a series of studies on obedience now his original reason for doing this was that uh it was it was uh not that long after the Nuremberg war trials from World War II. And it was pretty clear that a lot of the German soldiers and German people who had engaged in atrocities, had done terrible things to Jewish people and Gypsy people and all of these minority groups, they said, I was just following orders. So when Stanley Milgram sort of... planned the study, he thought, he assumed that there was something, you know, maybe unique about the German culture that made them particularly susceptible to following orders. Like, can you imagine, so imagine, you know, somebody just tells you to do something and you end up causing serious bodily harm. You don't know this person particularly, you have nothing against them, and you just have somebody telling you to do something quite terrible and you do it. So, it's sort of like the battle of your... your sense of your conscience of the right thing to do your moral conscience versus following orders and yeah so that's what uh he did now he fully expected it it turns out historically when he did the study he first did it with a group of american students and his expectation was that the american people they weren't just students they were they actually were the adults a volunteer group of adults from the community and he fully expected that they would refuse to and they wouldn't follow they wouldn't obey and then they would refuse and he would then have us have established that in a group of american citizens when i asked them to do something that they probably don't want to do most of them this percentage of people will simply disagree he thought maybe like the one percent of the group would do something very terrible uh by just following instructions then the plan was to go to germany you know and redo the study with a group of German citizens. And he expected that the Germans would be so much more susceptible and much more willing to obey an authority figure in comparison to Americans. Well, he certainly didn't find that. In fact, he was quite surprised at how basically they were obeying. Like he at first, he sort of had a preliminary sort of a pilot kind of study where He set up the scenario, had the people come in, and then basically told them to do things. And he fully expected them to resist and say, no, I'm not going to do that. But everybody did everything they were told. So then he said, well, I've got to change this experiment. I've got to up the ante. I'm going to have to ask them to do something more extreme. So he made it a little bit more extreme, did another pilot study, and nobody disagreed. Every person did everything they were told. So that's partly the reason he ended up doing such this famous shocker study where, you know, you end up shocking people. You believe the participants believe that they were they were shocking and potentially killing somebody. So he had to he basically was put in a situation where he thought everybody would disobey. Most people or almost everybody was doing exactly what they're told. So he was trying to make that. the experiment more and more intense with the expectation, well, somebody's got to disagree at some point here. So that was sort of the historical context or origin. Nuremberg trials in World War II, why are all these people willing to do terrible things to other people and just say, I was just following orders? And then when he went to set up his own experiment and get a nice little baseline of resistance, he didn't find the resistance he was looking for that he initially expected. Okay, and what it says here anyway is a series of studies on whether people will obey an authority figure when it violates their own ethical standards or moral conscience. So this was the experiment. There was the authority figure, the person in a white coat, generally, but he mixed that up. In later studies, he had them just come in casual clothes versus like a white lab coat. But the experimenter was the one who gave the orders, told them what to do, and they listened. And then there was a teacher and a learner. And the teacher was the participant, and the learner was a confederate, pretending to be a fellow participant. And the plan was that the learner had to learn a series of paired words. So if I say dog, you say cat. And I have to learn the correct... pairing and then later on I read I read all the pairings and I think I know them and then later you read the list to me and and I say and you say okay for the word dog what was the matching one was it rabbit cat hair or leash so if if if I get it right great we just go on to the next trial but if I get it wrong I I was shocked so if if I was the learner you and I got the answer wrong, then I would be given a shock. And so the rationale for the study originally was, well, we're looking into how physical punishment and shock, you know, in the form of a shock, improves learning. We think that if you're shocked every time you get something wrong, you're going to try harder and learn more effectively. That was the sort of the pretend, that was the fake rationale, that was the rationale for doing the study, and that's what participants were told. Now that of course was not really the purpose of the study. The real purpose of the study was to see how far people would go. If you told them to shock somebody, would they shock them with a mild shock, a moderate shock, or maybe even a severe shock, knowing or believing that you're hurting this person. So what I've done, I think I've posted links, both optional links and sort of to some degree required links. in your playlist for social psychology so you can watch the original one it's under the optional social psychology playlist and yeah you can watch the full 60 minutes of it if you want it's not required i don't think um and then i think i have i have a modern version as well that you can that you can take a look at this this study even though it took place a really long time ago has been replicated various times within various countries, with various populations, with both men and women from a variety of backgrounds. And we end up seeing very similar results each time. A large percentage of the participants conform and I'm sorry, obey. A large percentage of the participants obey and in fact, shock the person at the highest potential intensity that they can. and they only stop when the experimenter finally at the end when they've done it all uh says no you can stop it so you know we're done now so yeah that's the essentially it you know it goes in a lot of detail the video shows all sorts of things but that's the basic short overview of the experiment participant comes in with a fellow participant who's really a confederate the confederate is randomly assigned uh to be the learner But they're always assigned the learner and the teacher and the participant is always the teacher and the teacher shocks the learner. And how far will the teacher go? And unfortunately or whatever, fortunately, I guess, but unfortunately, they will shock people excessively just by following, you know, orders. Here's a little graphic of the things I think that were said. I have the exact quotes are these I think they match yeah something like that so so the shocking machine as you see in the video if you've watched it range from like a slight shock of 15 volts to you know moderate strong intense severe shock and then xxx 450 volts so that would you know probably kill somebody quite easily so And then here's a graph. If you look at the red line, you can see the graph of what percentage of people administered the shock to their fellow participants. So you both arrived at the experiment. You were randomly assigned to be the teacher, lucky you, and the other person was assigned to be the learner, poor them, right, because they're the ones going to be shocked. And then you're administering the shock as you go through this learning task. Every time they get it wrong, you zap them. And so 100% of the people were willing to give a 15 volt. This is just one study graph. About 100% were willing to give 75 volts. And at 75 volts, they would hear the learner in the other room go, ugh, you know, because it was like painful. And then like almost 100 percent, you can see it's gradually dropping. But still, almost everybody is giving even a shock of 150 volts. And then when that happens, the learner, the fake participant, the confederate, the learner says, get me out of here. My heart's starting to bother me. I refuse to go on. Let me out. And it's sort of a yelling, intense kind of thing. And still, you know, so that's a point where, you know, at least some people start to say, no, I'm not going to continue. I refuse. So there is some degree of disobedience there. A bigger drop goes maybe from the high 90s to 80 something. And and then and but so. so many of the participants just continued to administer the shock. So I, you know, the, and the, the, the statements from the so-called learner who was maybe being shocked in the other room was like, I can't stand the pain at 180 volts and agonized screams at 270 volts, intensely agonized screams at 315 volts. And so this is like pretty clear messages that the teacher is hearing. And yet Most of them are continuing with the experiment and what they'll do though. They'll stop they'll say no No, I really really think we should stop. This is dangerous You hear them and they say this along the way they say it when the person says I refuse to go on let me out They say I you know, I think we should stop and but the vast majority of people can be easily convinced to go on so the the Sorry, I just have to find it. The experimenter says to them, please continue. And then if they say, so they had a standard set of responses. This experimenter in a white lab coat would say, no, please continue. And then sometimes they would continue. But then they might put up a bit more resistance and say, no, no, I really think we should. So then the next response would be, the experiment requires you to continue. And if the person still says, no, no, I. You heard him. I really think we should stop. Then the next response is, it is absolutely essential that you continue. And the final response is, you have no other choice but to continue. They also tended to say something like, it's maybe painful, but it's not doing any physical damage or it's not doing any harm. So they also had that element to explain. It may be painful, but it's not doing any damage. But so they had a series of standardized responses to participants turning to the experimenter and saying, no, I really think we should quit. I want to quit. But the vast majority, as you can see, continued. They would put up this verbal resistance, but then they would just turn back and continue to administer the shocks. So that's the famous study. It was very surprising at the time that people would just keep going and keep shocking people when they're in pain and they're screaming and they're silent and now they're getting no response at all and they just continue zap, zap, zap away. So that's the famous Stanley Milgram obedience study. And we've learned a lot about it. At the time, he did 18 different versions of the study. So he did the first study, and then he wanted to change it up. He changed it up to see, well, under what conditions will it increase the likelihood or decrease the likelihood of people obeying? So there was a bunch of different manipulations he designed. And sometimes if he pointed out, if it was ever pointed out that they were personally responsible in some way for the for what happens they were far less likely to obey but if they pointed out that you know i'm we're respon you know i'm responsible you're not then they would obey much more likely to obey higher rates of obedience So they also looked at, so that was personal responsibility. Another factor they looked at is where it took place. I think it was Yale. Yeah, Yale University, famous university, very prestigious. They come to Yale and they obey. They probably told themselves, well, nothing bad is going to happen at Yale. Like, I know it sounds really bad, but, you know, they assumed that nothing terrible would happen in a place like this. So they did a different study where they went to a. downtown building, much poorer and grungier looking, and that's where they did the study. It still was a person, all the procedures were exactly the same, but it was in a downtown rented building, a bit grungier looking, and obedience levels were in fact lower. So the status of the location, whether it was a Yale University or an apartment downtown, influenced rates of obedience, personal responsibility. varied, changed rates of obedience. The look of the experimenter wearing a white coat and a suit conveyed a lot more prestige and status to the experimenter and they received higher levels of obedience. But if they came into the room as an experimenter with just everyday clothes, obedience rates were lower. So there are a number of factors that moderate or alter the likelihood that people will obey. Sometimes they had two experimenters in the room. And if one experimenter said, yeah, well, maybe we should quit. And then the other one said, no, it's essential that we continue with the experiment. Just having one dissenter, just like in conformity, but now in obedience. If even one of the experimenters. considered the possibility of stopping, disobedience rates went up and obedience rates went down, which is, you know, probably a good thing. If you had two participants, two real participants in the room together, and one of them, and they supported each other, so there's actually two real participants both being part of the study, one, you know, one shocking, one supportive, one there. And that would also lower obedience rates because they could support each other and both agree that it should be stopped. So there's a variety of interesting factors that, you know, altered or influenced the likelihood of obedience. But it was stunningly high given what they were doing to their fellow participant. Sorry, there's not. Okay, and here's a, so I just told you some of those ideas, but here's a few additional ones. These are factors that altered obedience levels or, you know, disobedience levels. They tried experiments where the experimenter wasn't even in the room, like that he had to leave the room. And in that case, what participants would sometimes do is they would pretend that they were obeying, but they would actually press a lower intensity button. So instead of hitting the 300 volt, they'd go back to a much lower one. Of course, if the victim was in the room, if the learner was in the room with them, they stopped sooner. And this was even more true if they set up a scenario where, because the learner didn't want to get shocked, they would move their hand or arm in such a way that it wasn't the shocker wouldn't work. So the teacher, the real participant, was in a position where they had to press the thing down on the person's hand in order to make sure that the shock device worked. Well, in those cases, obedience levels went down and disobedience went up. I already mentioned point three about two experimenters, and if there's two lab code experimenters or whatever, and one seemed to... disagree that yeah maybe we should stop then obedience levels went down and disobedience went up and i also talked about the status of the of the experiment or depending on how they looked where it was located uh that sort of thing definitely could uh influence obedience or disobedience levels and the multiple teachers ideas having another person in the same room and if you know both of you could agree with each other and you'd you know support each other and you'd be more likely to refuse or disobey. So those are some basic findings across a series of studies that were done way back in the day and have since then been replicated in modern times, certainly in the last 10 years, and a series they've done shows, movies, TV stuff. So there's a series of videos if you want to see them online. And I've also included some video links in the playlist for this experiment as well. Now there were some... issues with this study. It was not a great study from an ethical perspective. It was quite terrible. There was huge deception because it turns out, as you probably know if you've watched heard of this experiment before or watched the videos, that the learner wasn't actually being shocked at all. It was all fake. It was an act, went in there, was hooked up to the machine, and then as soon as the real participant, the teacher, left, disconnected themselves and turned on a device for playing the sound. So they played the protests and the screaming and the yelling and the resistance. That was all just pre-recorded. That was activated each time a certain level of shocking occurred. So there was clear deception, but it was distressing. Participants were actually quite distressed sometimes. They were nervous, sometimes nervous laughter. They tried to stop. And they were just told, no, you must continue or please continue or it's essential that you continue. And so it was quite a stressful process and it was founded on deception. They were debriefed, though. They were told that the person was OK and that really did help. But for some of the participants, they weren't like completely debriefed. So so they could do follow up studies with those same ones. So that's not. That's questionable at the best as well. But in the end, overall, it was a very powerful demonstration of how circumstances, how the situation you're in can have a very powerful influence on what you're willing to do. So if you're in the wrong situation at the wrong time, you may act in ways that you would never dream of acting. if you were on your own and you think about the types of things that you would do. And then this kind of obedience in these atrocities and bad things that people do, it does happen and sometimes it is attributable to obedience and being in certain situations. So there's a famous, there's a movie that talked about African child soldiers. They didn't want to be murderers, but they were made scared. and told to do it and they did it. So there's various examples of this more recently and in the past. Now, here's some suggested reasons why people obey others more generally, like not in this extreme situation, but just more generally, there is a tendency for people to obey others. One of the basic reasons is somebody tells you to do something and you do it. And why do you do it? Because You think you're just following orders. You're just like, it's not my call. It's not my responsibility. They're the boss. They're the person in charge. They're telling me to do it, so I'm not really responsible. I'm just like a cog in the wheel. They're running the machine. I'm just a cog. So they allocate responsibility to the authority figure, and so they basically are telling themselves, it's not up to me. I'm not personally responsible. That encourages people to obey. Something as simple as just wanting to be polite. So in this case, you're not doing something horrible. You don't politely shock somebody to death. But people will do things when they're asked to do them just because of social conditioning. Because, well, you can't be rude. You can't cause a big fuss. You can't cause a bunch of problems. And so it's like, oh, it's just easier just to do what they've asked me to do, even if you disagree. And another concept here is becoming entrapped is one explanation for patterns of obedience. It's a gradual process where you do something for someone. They ask you to do something or they tell you to do something. So you do it. And now you're sort of in the game. Now you sort of, OK, well, I'm part of the game. So you put some time, you put some energy. Initially, you're doing something. And now it's almost like. Well, I'm already doing it, so if they ask me to do a bit more, I probably should do even a bit more. Like, well, OK, so I don't want to waste, you know, I did that for a reason in the first place. So why wouldn't I do this next thing? So that's an entrapment process. And the easiest ways to avoid that is to just disagree early on and then you won't get entrapped. So that's quite a bit about the obedience process. The famous Stanley Milgram trials are experiments of obedience and the teacher and the learner and the shocking and that sort of thing. The first study I forgot to mention was Solomon Ash. He was the guy who did the studies on conformity in the line length studies. But this is Stanley Milgram. And then I had wanted to just point out and highlight four compliance, you know, obedience or compliance related concepts that are commonly used actually among certain groups of people, like whether it's salesmen or managers, people who try to get others to do what they want them to do. So I guess it's not always being exactly told what to do, but it's techniques for getting people to do something that they might not normally do on their own. The norm of reciprocity. Sometimes you do something. So if you if you're trying to be manipulated into doing something someone else wants, sometimes what they'll do is do something for you. Maybe you didn't even ask them to do for you, do it for you. They just. sort of approached you did a favor for you offered something for you and then they ask you to do something for them and this underlying sense of reciprocity well they i they did something for me so now i should do something for them that that that sort of psychological motive of fairness of reciprocity kicks in and then you might be more willing to help them out or do what they ask you to do than you would have on your own so grocery stores use that in terms of free food samples so they give out food and then you feel sort of like well i ate their food they gave me this food i should probably buy the buy the item that's one technique and yeah that increases compliance another one is the foot in the door technique that's pretty basic in some respects So you ask somebody to do something, a small request, something not that difficult that would be easy enough for them to do. And they agree. Many more people would agree to that. Then once they've done it, you ask them to do a much bigger request and they actually get higher rates of agreement. People comply. People are willing to do these bigger requests if they first agreed to do a small request for you earlier. And one common explanation for this is that you've sort of been drawn into some sort of psychological commitment to the person and the event or the task. So that's one explanation is that, well, you invested, you psychologically committed or got invested into the event. Initial help also makes that initial small request when you did it, it made you feel good. So you're also encouraged to help again because, well. you know, I agreed to do it, I'm part of it now, and it did feel good to help them. So a couple of different reasons why this foot in the door technique works in terms of getting people to do things they might not normally do on their own. The door in the face, it's just a funny name, but it's the real name. You first, it's quite the opposite really, you first make a big, a really big request of somebody, and then most people say no. you know no what no forget it that's ridiculous you know i'm not going to do that and then they follow it up well would you at least do this would you do like a much smaller request um and if you compare a request like the two two scenarios one scenario you walk up to the person and ask them for a small request some people do it some people don't whatever like let's say 30 of the population i don't know scenario two You go to a group of people, you ask them for a really big request, they say no, and then you ask them for a small request. Well, it turns out that instead of 30% of the people agreeing to the small request, you're much more likely to get, you know, 40 or 50 or 60%. So it actually works as a technique. Ask for something way bigger than anybody would agree, then radically drop your request. Well, could you at least do this? And the psychological mechanism we think accounts for that is reciprocity. Well, they did something for me, so I should do something for them. Well, what did they do for you? Well, what they did for you was they dropped their request. Well, they initially asked for a really large request, but then they compromised and dropped it. So they made a compromise. They did something for you. So why don't you return the favor for them? So that's why the door in the face technique works. And lowballing is, I guess, car salesmen sometimes do this or salespeople, sorry, salespersons, sales. creatures low-balling so that you and I think this involves a psychological commitment again by the way that's them that's the underlying mechanism but you you decide to buy something and but maybe you know well it's too expensive I really can't afford this well we can give you it for this and this and this and it so you you basically get a you get some sort of offer you can't refuse well alright at that price I'm going to buy it it's worth it And then they start to do the paperwork, fill it all out. You've sort of committed to buying it. You're sort of in the game now. And then they come back and say, well, oh, well, because of this surcharge and that surcharge and this, or my manager really won't let me do it. There's all these excuses, basically. And suddenly that price that you agreed to and were committed to suddenly has increased. quite a bit that's called the low-balling technique and uh yeah people will fall for it it does tend to work so people end up buying something or agreeing to do something uh for for with which will require a much bigger commitment than they would have agreed to had they not uh first agreed to the smaller price or the smaller commitment so those are four i think interesting compliance techniques that you could be aware of going Out in the world these days. So that's it for this obedience and compliance lecture

Now, this is not the same as conformity, right? Conformity, you chose, you decided to do what everyone else was doing for your own reasons. So obedience is like similar.

but not the same right you're you're being told to do something and you do it oh didn't work okay so stanley milgram did it work oh sorry there we go uh stanley milgram uh from yale university conducted a series of studies on obedience now his original reason for doing this was that uh it was it was uh not that long after the Nuremberg war trials from World War II. And it was pretty clear that a lot of the German soldiers and German people who had engaged in atrocities, had done terrible things to Jewish people and Gypsy people and all of these minority groups, they said, I was just following orders. So when Stanley Milgram sort of... planned the study, he thought, he assumed that there was something, you know, maybe unique about the German culture that made them particularly susceptible to following orders.

Like, can you imagine, so imagine, you know, somebody just tells you to do something and you end up causing serious bodily harm. You don't know this person particularly, you have nothing against them, and you just have somebody telling you to do something quite terrible and you do it. So, it's sort of like the battle of your...

your sense of your conscience of the right thing to do your moral conscience versus following orders and yeah so that's what uh he did now he fully expected it it turns out historically when he did the study he first did it with a group of american students and his expectation was that the american people they weren't just students they were they actually were the adults a volunteer group of adults from the community and he fully expected that they would refuse to and they wouldn't follow they wouldn't obey and then they would refuse and he would then have us have established that in a group of american citizens when i asked them to do something that they probably don't want to do most of them this percentage of people will simply disagree he thought maybe like the one percent of the group would do something very terrible uh by just following instructions then the plan was to go to germany you know and redo the study with a group of German citizens. And he expected that the Germans would be so much more susceptible and much more willing to obey an authority figure in comparison to Americans. Well, he certainly didn't find that.

In fact, he was quite surprised at how basically they were obeying. Like he at first, he sort of had a preliminary sort of a pilot kind of study where He set up the scenario, had the people come in, and then basically told them to do things. And he fully expected them to resist and say, no, I'm not going to do that. But everybody did everything they were told.

So then he said, well, I've got to change this experiment. I've got to up the ante. I'm going to have to ask them to do something more extreme.

So he made it a little bit more extreme, did another pilot study, and nobody disagreed. Every person did everything they were told. So that's partly the reason he ended up doing such this famous shocker study where, you know, you end up shocking people. You believe the participants believe that they were they were shocking and potentially killing somebody.

So he had to he basically was put in a situation where he thought everybody would disobey. Most people or almost everybody was doing exactly what they're told. So he was trying to make that. the experiment more and more intense with the expectation, well, somebody's got to disagree at some point here.

So that was sort of the historical context or origin. Nuremberg trials in World War II, why are all these people willing to do terrible things to other people and just say, I was just following orders? And then when he went to set up his own experiment and get a nice little baseline of resistance, he didn't find the resistance he was looking for that he initially expected. Okay, and what it says here anyway is a series of studies on whether people will obey an authority figure when it violates their own ethical standards or moral conscience. So this was the experiment.

There was the authority figure, the person in a white coat, generally, but he mixed that up. In later studies, he had them just come in casual clothes versus like a white lab coat. But the experimenter was the one who gave the orders, told them what to do, and they listened.

And then there was a teacher and a learner. And the teacher was the participant, and the learner was a confederate, pretending to be a fellow participant. And the plan was that the learner had to learn a series of paired words. So if I say dog, you say cat. And I have to learn the correct...

pairing and then later on I read I read all the pairings and I think I know them and then later you read the list to me and and I say and you say okay for the word dog what was the matching one was it rabbit cat hair or leash so if if if I get it right great we just go on to the next trial but if I get it wrong I I was shocked so if if I was the learner you and I got the answer wrong, then I would be given a shock. And so the rationale for the study originally was, well, we're looking into how physical punishment and shock, you know, in the form of a shock, improves learning. We think that if you're shocked every time you get something wrong, you're going to try harder and learn more effectively. That was the sort of the pretend, that was the fake rationale, that was the rationale for doing the study, and that's what participants were told. Now that of course was not really the purpose of the study.

The real purpose of the study was to see how far people would go. If you told them to shock somebody, would they shock them with a mild shock, a moderate shock, or maybe even a severe shock, knowing or believing that you're hurting this person. So what I've done, I think I've posted links, both optional links and sort of to some degree required links.

in your playlist for social psychology so you can watch the original one it's under the optional social psychology playlist and yeah you can watch the full 60 minutes of it if you want it's not required i don't think um and then i think i have i have a modern version as well that you can that you can take a look at this this study even though it took place a really long time ago has been replicated various times within various countries, with various populations, with both men and women from a variety of backgrounds. And we end up seeing very similar results each time. A large percentage of the participants conform and I'm sorry, obey.

A large percentage of the participants obey and in fact, shock the person at the highest potential intensity that they can. and they only stop when the experimenter finally at the end when they've done it all uh says no you can stop it so you know we're done now so yeah that's the essentially it you know it goes in a lot of detail the video shows all sorts of things but that's the basic short overview of the experiment participant comes in with a fellow participant who's really a confederate the confederate is randomly assigned uh to be the learner But they're always assigned the learner and the teacher and the participant is always the teacher and the teacher shocks the learner. And how far will the teacher go? And unfortunately or whatever, fortunately, I guess, but unfortunately, they will shock people excessively just by following, you know, orders.

Here's a little graphic of the things I think that were said. I have the exact quotes are these I think they match yeah something like that so so the shocking machine as you see in the video if you've watched it range from like a slight shock of 15 volts to you know moderate strong intense severe shock and then xxx 450 volts so that would you know probably kill somebody quite easily so And then here's a graph. If you look at the red line, you can see the graph of what percentage of people administered the shock to their fellow participants. So you both arrived at the experiment. You were randomly assigned to be the teacher, lucky you, and the other person was assigned to be the learner, poor them, right, because they're the ones going to be shocked.

And then you're administering the shock as you go through this learning task. Every time they get it wrong, you zap them. And so 100% of the people were willing to give a 15 volt.

This is just one study graph. About 100% were willing to give 75 volts. And at 75 volts, they would hear the learner in the other room go, ugh, you know, because it was like painful. And then like almost 100 percent, you can see it's gradually dropping.

But still, almost everybody is giving even a shock of 150 volts. And then when that happens, the learner, the fake participant, the confederate, the learner says, get me out of here. My heart's starting to bother me. I refuse to go on.

Let me out. And it's sort of a yelling, intense kind of thing. And still, you know, so that's a point where, you know, at least some people start to say, no, I'm not going to continue.

I refuse. So there is some degree of disobedience there. A bigger drop goes maybe from the high 90s to 80 something.

And and then and but so. so many of the participants just continued to administer the shock. So I, you know, the, and the, the, the statements from the so-called learner who was maybe being shocked in the other room was like, I can't stand the pain at 180 volts and agonized screams at 270 volts, intensely agonized screams at 315 volts. And so this is like pretty clear messages that the teacher is hearing.

And yet Most of them are continuing with the experiment and what they'll do though. They'll stop they'll say no No, I really really think we should stop. This is dangerous You hear them and they say this along the way they say it when the person says I refuse to go on let me out They say I you know, I think we should stop and but the vast majority of people can be easily convinced to go on so the the Sorry, I just have to find it. The experimenter says to them, please continue.

And then if they say, so they had a standard set of responses. This experimenter in a white lab coat would say, no, please continue. And then sometimes they would continue.

But then they might put up a bit more resistance and say, no, no, I really think we should. So then the next response would be, the experiment requires you to continue. And if the person still says, no, no, I.

You heard him. I really think we should stop. Then the next response is, it is absolutely essential that you continue.

And the final response is, you have no other choice but to continue. They also tended to say something like, it's maybe painful, but it's not doing any physical damage or it's not doing any harm. So they also had that element to explain.

It may be painful, but it's not doing any damage. But so they had a series of standardized responses to participants turning to the experimenter and saying, no, I really think we should quit. I want to quit. But the vast majority, as you can see, continued.

They would put up this verbal resistance, but then they would just turn back and continue to administer the shocks. So that's the famous study. It was very surprising at the time that people would just keep going and keep shocking people when they're in pain and they're screaming and they're silent and now they're getting no response at all and they just continue zap, zap, zap away.

So that's the famous Stanley Milgram obedience study. And we've learned a lot about it. At the time, he did 18 different versions of the study.

So he did the first study, and then he wanted to change it up. He changed it up to see, well, under what conditions will it increase the likelihood or decrease the likelihood of people obeying? So there was a bunch of different manipulations he designed.

And sometimes if he pointed out, if it was ever pointed out that they were personally responsible in some way for the for what happens they were far less likely to obey but if they pointed out that you know i'm we're respon you know i'm responsible you're not then they would obey much more likely to obey higher rates of obedience So they also looked at, so that was personal responsibility. Another factor they looked at is where it took place. I think it was Yale.

Yeah, Yale University, famous university, very prestigious. They come to Yale and they obey. They probably told themselves, well, nothing bad is going to happen at Yale. Like, I know it sounds really bad, but, you know, they assumed that nothing terrible would happen in a place like this. So they did a different study where they went to a.

downtown building, much poorer and grungier looking, and that's where they did the study. It still was a person, all the procedures were exactly the same, but it was in a downtown rented building, a bit grungier looking, and obedience levels were in fact lower. So the status of the location, whether it was a Yale University or an apartment downtown, influenced rates of obedience, personal responsibility. varied, changed rates of obedience.

The look of the experimenter wearing a white coat and a suit conveyed a lot more prestige and status to the experimenter and they received higher levels of obedience. But if they came into the room as an experimenter with just everyday clothes, obedience rates were lower. So there are a number of factors that moderate or alter the likelihood that people will obey.

Sometimes they had two experimenters in the room. And if one experimenter said, yeah, well, maybe we should quit. And then the other one said, no, it's essential that we continue with the experiment. Just having one dissenter, just like in conformity, but now in obedience.

If even one of the experimenters. considered the possibility of stopping, disobedience rates went up and obedience rates went down, which is, you know, probably a good thing. If you had two participants, two real participants in the room together, and one of them, and they supported each other, so there's actually two real participants both being part of the study, one, you know, one shocking, one supportive, one there.

And that would also lower obedience rates because they could support each other and both agree that it should be stopped. So there's a variety of interesting factors that, you know, altered or influenced the likelihood of obedience. But it was stunningly high given what they were doing to their fellow participant.

Sorry, there's not. Okay, and here's a, so I just told you some of those ideas, but here's a few additional ones. These are factors that altered obedience levels or, you know, disobedience levels. They tried experiments where the experimenter wasn't even in the room, like that he had to leave the room.

And in that case, what participants would sometimes do is they would pretend that they were obeying, but they would actually press a lower intensity button. So instead of hitting the 300 volt, they'd go back to a much lower one. Of course, if the victim was in the room, if the learner was in the room with them, they stopped sooner.

And this was even more true if they set up a scenario where, because the learner didn't want to get shocked, they would move their hand or arm in such a way that it wasn't the shocker wouldn't work. So the teacher, the real participant, was in a position where they had to press the thing down on the person's hand in order to make sure that the shock device worked. Well, in those cases, obedience levels went down and disobedience went up. I already mentioned point three about two experimenters, and if there's two lab code experimenters or whatever, and one seemed to... disagree that yeah maybe we should stop then obedience levels went down and disobedience went up and i also talked about the status of the of the experiment or depending on how they looked where it was located uh that sort of thing definitely could uh influence obedience or disobedience levels and the multiple teachers ideas having another person in the same room and if you know both of you could agree with each other and you'd you know support each other and you'd be more likely to refuse or disobey.

So those are some basic findings across a series of studies that were done way back in the day and have since then been replicated in modern times, certainly in the last 10 years, and a series they've done shows, movies, TV stuff. So there's a series of videos if you want to see them online. And I've also included some video links in the playlist for this experiment as well. Now there were some... issues with this study.

It was not a great study from an ethical perspective. It was quite terrible. There was huge deception because it turns out, as you probably know if you've watched heard of this experiment before or watched the videos, that the learner wasn't actually being shocked at all.

It was all fake. It was an act, went in there, was hooked up to the machine, and then as soon as the real participant, the teacher, left, disconnected themselves and turned on a device for playing the sound. So they played the protests and the screaming and the yelling and the resistance. That was all just pre-recorded. That was activated each time a certain level of shocking occurred.

So there was clear deception, but it was distressing. Participants were actually quite distressed sometimes. They were nervous, sometimes nervous laughter.

They tried to stop. And they were just told, no, you must continue or please continue or it's essential that you continue. And so it was quite a stressful process and it was founded on deception. They were debriefed, though. They were told that the person was OK and that really did help.

But for some of the participants, they weren't like completely debriefed. So so they could do follow up studies with those same ones. So that's not. That's questionable at the best as well.

But in the end, overall, it was a very powerful demonstration of how circumstances, how the situation you're in can have a very powerful influence on what you're willing to do. So if you're in the wrong situation at the wrong time, you may act in ways that you would never dream of acting. if you were on your own and you think about the types of things that you would do. And then this kind of obedience in these atrocities and bad things that people do, it does happen and sometimes it is attributable to obedience and being in certain situations. So there's a famous, there's a movie that talked about African child soldiers.

They didn't want to be murderers, but they were made scared. and told to do it and they did it. So there's various examples of this more recently and in the past. Now, here's some suggested reasons why people obey others more generally, like not in this extreme situation, but just more generally, there is a tendency for people to obey others.

One of the basic reasons is somebody tells you to do something and you do it. And why do you do it? Because You think you're just following orders. You're just like, it's not my call.

It's not my responsibility. They're the boss. They're the person in charge. They're telling me to do it, so I'm not really responsible. I'm just like a cog in the wheel.

They're running the machine. I'm just a cog. So they allocate responsibility to the authority figure, and so they basically are telling themselves, it's not up to me.

I'm not personally responsible. That encourages people to obey. Something as simple as just wanting to be polite. So in this case, you're not doing something horrible.

You don't politely shock somebody to death. But people will do things when they're asked to do them just because of social conditioning. Because, well, you can't be rude. You can't cause a big fuss. You can't cause a bunch of problems.

And so it's like, oh, it's just easier just to do what they've asked me to do, even if you disagree. And another concept here is becoming entrapped is one explanation for patterns of obedience. It's a gradual process where you do something for someone. They ask you to do something or they tell you to do something. So you do it.

And now you're sort of in the game. Now you sort of, OK, well, I'm part of the game. So you put some time, you put some energy.

Initially, you're doing something. And now it's almost like. Well, I'm already doing it, so if they ask me to do a bit more, I probably should do even a bit more. Like, well, OK, so I don't want to waste, you know, I did that for a reason in the first place. So why wouldn't I do this next thing?

So that's an entrapment process. And the easiest ways to avoid that is to just disagree early on and then you won't get entrapped. So that's quite a bit about the obedience process.

The famous Stanley Milgram trials are experiments of obedience and the teacher and the learner and the shocking and that sort of thing. The first study I forgot to mention was Solomon Ash. He was the guy who did the studies on conformity in the line length studies.

But this is Stanley Milgram. And then I had wanted to just point out and highlight four compliance, you know, obedience or compliance related concepts that are commonly used actually among certain groups of people, like whether it's salesmen or managers, people who try to get others to do what they want them to do. So I guess it's not always being exactly told what to do, but it's techniques for getting people to do something that they might not normally do on their own. The norm of reciprocity. Sometimes you do something.

So if you if you're trying to be manipulated into doing something someone else wants, sometimes what they'll do is do something for you. Maybe you didn't even ask them to do for you, do it for you. They just.

sort of approached you did a favor for you offered something for you and then they ask you to do something for them and this underlying sense of reciprocity well they i they did something for me so now i should do something for them that that that sort of psychological motive of fairness of reciprocity kicks in and then you might be more willing to help them out or do what they ask you to do than you would have on your own so grocery stores use that in terms of free food samples so they give out food and then you feel sort of like well i ate their food they gave me this food i should probably buy the buy the item that's one technique and yeah that increases compliance another one is the foot in the door technique that's pretty basic in some respects So you ask somebody to do something, a small request, something not that difficult that would be easy enough for them to do. And they agree. Many more people would agree to that.

Then once they've done it, you ask them to do a much bigger request and they actually get higher rates of agreement. People comply. People are willing to do these bigger requests if they first agreed to do a small request for you earlier. And one common explanation for this is that you've sort of been drawn into some sort of psychological commitment to the person and the event or the task. So that's one explanation is that, well, you invested, you psychologically committed or got invested into the event.

Initial help also makes that initial small request when you did it, it made you feel good. So you're also encouraged to help again because, well. you know, I agreed to do it, I'm part of it now, and it did feel good to help them.

So a couple of different reasons why this foot in the door technique works in terms of getting people to do things they might not normally do on their own. The door in the face, it's just a funny name, but it's the real name. You first, it's quite the opposite really, you first make a big, a really big request of somebody, and then most people say no. you know no what no forget it that's ridiculous you know i'm not going to do that and then they follow it up well would you at least do this would you do like a much smaller request um and if you compare a request like the two two scenarios one scenario you walk up to the person and ask them for a small request some people do it some people don't whatever like let's say 30 of the population i don't know scenario two You go to a group of people, you ask them for a really big request, they say no, and then you ask them for a small request.

Well, it turns out that instead of 30% of the people agreeing to the small request, you're much more likely to get, you know, 40 or 50 or 60%. So it actually works as a technique. Ask for something way bigger than anybody would agree, then radically drop your request. Well, could you at least do this?

And the psychological mechanism we think accounts for that is reciprocity. Well, they did something for me, so I should do something for them. Well, what did they do for you? Well, what they did for you was they dropped their request.

Well, they initially asked for a really large request, but then they compromised and dropped it. So they made a compromise. They did something for you. So why don't you return the favor for them?

So that's why the door in the face technique works. And lowballing is, I guess, car salesmen sometimes do this or salespeople, sorry, salespersons, sales. creatures low-balling so that you and I think this involves a psychological commitment again by the way that's them that's the underlying mechanism but you you decide to buy something and but maybe you know well it's too expensive I really can't afford this well we can give you it for this and this and this and it so you you basically get a you get some sort of offer you can't refuse well alright at that price I'm going to buy it it's worth it And then they start to do the paperwork, fill it all out.

You've sort of committed to buying it. You're sort of in the game now. And then they come back and say, well, oh, well, because of this surcharge and that surcharge and this, or my manager really won't let me do it.

There's all these excuses, basically. And suddenly that price that you agreed to and were committed to suddenly has increased. quite a bit that's called the low-balling technique and uh yeah people will fall for it it does tend to work so people end up buying something or agreeing to do something uh for for with which will require a much bigger commitment than they would have agreed to had they not uh first agreed to the smaller price or the smaller commitment so those are four i think interesting compliance techniques that you could be aware of going Out in the world these days.

So that's it for this obedience and compliance lecture

Transcript for:Understanding Obedience in Social Psychology

Transcript for:
Understanding Obedience in Social Psychology