Specification: Explanations for obedience: agentic state and legitimacy of authority, and situational variables affecting obedience including proximity and location, as investigated by Milgram, and uniform.

In contrast to conformity, where pressure comes from the behaviour of the majority, obedience is a form of social influence that is in direct response to an order from another person. One of the most famous, and arguably infamous, research studies in psychology is that conducted by Milgram to investigate obedience to authority.

Key Study: Milgram (1963)

Aim: To investigate whether ordinary people would obey an unjust order from an authority figure and inflict pain and injure an innocent person.

Method: Milgram’s sample consisted of 40 male American participants recruited through a newspaper advert. The participants were all volunteers who were paid $4.50 to take part.

They were all invited to a laboratory at the prestigious Yale University, where they met the experimenter and another participants (who were both confederates). They ‘drew lots’ to see who would be assigned to each role within the study but this was fixed so that the real participant was always assigned to the role of the ‘teacher’ and was instructed by the experimenter to administer an electric shock of increasing strength to the ‘learner’, ‘Mr Wallace’, every time he made a mistake when recalling a list of word pairs.

The ‘learner’ was strapped by the arms into a chair in the room next door and a shock was demonstrated to the teacher to make the ‘shocks’ appear real. The participant was required to test the learner’s ability to recall pairs of words. Each time the learner got an answer wrong the teacher was required to administer an electric shock, increasing the voltage each time. The shocks started at 15 volts and increased in intervals of 15 to 450 volts. At 300 volts (intense shock) the learner would back on the wall and complain. After the 315-volt shock was administered there were no further responses heard from the learner.

The experiment continued until either the participant refused to continue, or the maximum level of 45- volts, labelled ‘XXX Danger, Severe Shock’, was reached. If the teacher tried to stop the experiment, the experimenter would respond with a series of verbal prods, for example, ‘the experiment requires that you continue’.

Results: Milgram found that all of the participants went to at least 300 volts and 65% continued and administered the full 450 volts. In addition to this quantitative date, qualitative observations were also made which report that participants showed signs of distress and tension: for example, sweating, stuttering and trembling.

Conclusion: Milgram concluded that, under the right situational circumstances, ordinary people will obet unjust orders from someone perceived to be a legitimate authority figure.

Evaluating Milgram (1963)

One criticism of Milgram’s study is that is broke several ethical guidelines. Milgram deceived his participants as they believed that they were taking part in a study on how punishment affects learning, rather than on obedience. They were also deceived by the rigging of the role allocation that was in fact pre-determined. Due to the nature of the task, Milgram did not protect the participants from psychological harm, since many of them showed signs of real distress during the experiment and may have continued to feel guilty following the experiment, knowing that they could have harmed another human being. Some critics of Milgram’s believe that these breaches could serve to damage the reputation of psychology and jeopardise future research.

Another criticism of Milgram’s study is that is lacks ecological validity. This is because Milgram conducted a laboratory study, which is very different from real-life situations of obedience. In everyday life, we often obey far more harmless instructions, rather than giving people electric shocks. As a result, we are unable to generalise his findings to real-life situations of obedience and cannot conclude that people would obey less severe instructions to the same degree. However, Milgram counters this claim, stating that the laboratory can reflect wider authority relationships seen in real-life situations. For example, Hofling et al (1966) found that nurses were surprisingly obedient to unjustified instructions from a doctor in a hospital setting.

Another methodological criticism of Milgram’s study is that it lacks population validity. This is because Milgram used a biased sample of 40 male American volunteers from a broadly individualistic society. Therefore, we are unable to generalise the results to other populations, particularly collectivist cultures or to explain the behaviour of females, since it cannot be concluded that those with other cultural experiences, or female participants, would respond in a similar way to that observed originally by Milgram.

The internal validity of Milgram’s study has also been criticised. Orne and Holland (1968) propose that so many of the participants went to higher voltages because they did not believe the shocks to be real and they were not in fact fooled by the experimental set-up. This means that Milgram may not have been testing what he intended to investigate, this lowering the internal validity. He later argued that up to 70% of the participants did in fact believe the shocks they were administering were real, although a recent review of the original tape recordings reports that many more of the participants vocalise doubt about the genuine nature of the electric shocks.

Social-Psychological Factors: Agentic State

Agency theory suggests that we are socialised from a very young age to follow the rules of society. But, in order for this to happen, a person needs to surrender some of their free will. When a person is acting independently this is called the autonomous state. The opposite of this is being in an agentic state, which occurs when an individual carries out the orders of the authority figure and acts as their 'agent', with little personal responsibility and reduced moral strain for their actions. To shift from autonomy to 'agency' is referred to as the 'agentic shift'.

In Milgram's original experiment, 65% of participants administered the full 450 volts and were arguably in an agentic state. However,  in one variation of Milgram's experiment, an additional confederate administered the electric shocks on behalf of the teacher. In this variation, the percentage of participants who administered the full 450 volts rose dramatically, from 65% to 92.5%, which highlights the power of shifting responsibility (agentic shift) to another person by having them act as the agent.

Legitimacy of Authority

Milgram believed that, by focusing on the procedure and following the instructions that were given by the experimenter, the participants were recognising the legitimate authority of the researcher. In Milgram’s original research, which took place at the prestigious Yale University, the percentage of participants administering the full 450 volts was 65%. However, when the experiment was replicated in a rundown building in Bridgeport, Connecticut, obedience levels dropped to 47.5%. This change in location reduced the legitimacy of the authority, as participants were less likely to trust the experiment, and the power of the authority figure was diminished.

Evaluating Explanations for Obedience

There is research support for the role of the agentic state in explaining Milgram’s high obedience rates. When Blass and Schmitt (2001) asked students to watch the original footage and suggest who was responsible for the ‘harm’ caused to the learner, they named the experimenter. It was thought that the experimenter, as a scientist wearing a white coat, was at the top of the social hierarchy and therefore had legitimate authority over the situation and outcomes.

There are differences in the degree to which authority figures are seen and accepted as legitimate in some cultures. Kilman and Mann (1974) for example, replicated Milgram’s original study procedures in Australia but found that only 16% of the participants shocked the learner at the maximum voltage level whereas Mantell (1971), on the other hand, showed that it was 85% when conducted in Germany. This cross-cultural comparison shows that different societies follow alternative hierarchical structures and children may be socialised differently from a young age to be more, or less, obedient towards figures who are viewed as legitimate within that specific culture.

There is research support for the role of the situational variable of uniform affecting obedience rates. Bickman (1974) conducted a field experiment in New York City where confederates stood on the street and asked members of the public who were passing by to perform a small task such as picking up a piece of litter and providing a coin for the parking meter. The outfit that the confederate was wearing varied from a smart suit jacket and tie, a milkman’s outfit or a security guard’s uniform. It was found that in this final condition that members of the public were twice as likely to obey the order given by the ‘security guard’, which supports Milgram’s idea that a uniform adds to the legitimacy of the authority future and is a situational variable which increases obedience levels.

Milgram’s methodological approach to systematically changing one variable at a time in his experiments investigating the effect of variations on obedience can be praised for having high reliability. Since Milgram had high control over these variations it was possible to closely monitor the effect each was having on obedience rates. All of the procedures followed standardised methods, with variables being kept as consistent as possible. In total over 1,000 participants took part across all studies, providing a weight of evidence not seen in other areas of social influence research.

Possible exam questions

1. 1. Identify which one of the following is not a situational variable know to affect rates of obedience. (1 mark)

a) Locus of Control

b) Proximity

c) Uniform

d) Location 

1. 2. With reference to obedience, explain what is meant by the agentic state. (2 marks)

   3. Aside from personality type, outline one psychological explanation for defiance of authority. (2 marks)

   4. When you are a passenger travelling on a bus, you are much more likely to move to another seat if the bus driver tells you to move compared to if another passenger asks you to.

Use your knowledge of why people obey to explain this behaviour. (4 marks)

1. 5. Describe one study of obedience. (4 marks)

   6. If you are in a hospital setting, you are likely to obey the commands of a nurse who works there. However, if you were to meet her outside the hospital, for example in a cafe, it’s much less probable that you will obey her orders. Using your knowledge and understanding of how people resist pressures to obey, explain why you are less likely to obey the nurse when not in the hospital setting. (4 marks) 

   7. Describe two ethical issues that can be illustrated by Milgram’s research into obedience to authority. (4 marks)

   8. When in class, Miss Williams asks all her students to listen without speaking when a story book is being read aloud to the whole group. Her class of Year 6 students all obey and do not speak or interrupt whilst she is reading aloud. When Miss Williams hears some of her students at the weekend in her local cinema talking loudly during an animated film she tells them to stop. They refuse to obey her command. Using your knowledge and understanding of Milgram’s research variations, explain the difference in the children’s behaviour between school and at the cinema. (4 marks)

   9. Aside from ethical issues, explain one strength and one limitation of Milgram’s methodology. (4 marks) 

   10. Milgram’s study has been heavily criticised for lacking in validity. Evaluate the validity of Milgram’s original research into obedience. (6 marks)

   11. Some psychologists criticise Milgram’s research into obedience to authority, in terms of both methodological issues and ethical issues. Explain two criticisms of Milgram’s research. (6 marks)

   12. Outline two explanations for obedience. (6 marks)

   13. Discuss research into obedience as investigated by Milgram. (16 marks)

   14. Outline and evaluate how situational variables have been shown to affect obedience to authority. (16 marks)

   15. Outline one or more explanation of why people obey. (16 marks).