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Back to Subjects - Sociology

Obedience to authority

Obedience to authority Obedience is one of the most basic tenants of social life. It is a requirement of any form of communal living (Milgram, 1963). Society itself is predicted upon existence. All political purpose is linked to individual action through way of obedience. Theory and observations of social interaction has led researchers to believe that obedience is, for many people, a deeply ingrained trait (Milgram 1963). While having the potential for educative purpose and promoting acts of charity, it can also cause the most ethical and moralistic to abandon their core values and seemingly close their eyes while following an unjustified authority. Starting in the early 60’s, Stanley Milgram began to investigate this destructive form of obedience. However, Milgram’s classic experiments have come under severe attack. Some critics argue that their validity hinges on the acting ability of the learner and experimenter, and that most subjects were probably able to sense the unreality of the situation. Others question the relevance of the laboratory results to the larger world. Still others question the ethics of the basic experimental design. Milgrams famous experiments entitled "obedience to authority" followed the aftermath of the Holocaust and the events leading up to World War II. The world was stunned with the happenings in Nazi German and their acquired surrounding territories that came out during the Eichmann Trials. Eichmann, a high ranking official of the Nazi Party, was on trail for war crimes against humanity. The question was, "Could it be that Eichmann, and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Stanley Milgram answered the call to this problem by performing a series of studies on the Obedience to Authority. In the study, the subjects who answered an ad to be volunteers for an experiment for $4.50 an hour, were led to believe the purpose of the experiment was to study learning and memory. All subjects were then placed in a room in front of a shock generator and told that he was the "teacher". The "teacher then watched as the "learner", an actor, was led to a chair that strongly resembled a small electric chair and strapped into it. The teacher was then required by the experimenter to read word pairs to the learner. If the learner could not respond with the correct answer in a set period of time, the teacher would be told to administer increasing levels of shocks (from 15 to 450 volts and labelled from "slight shock" to Severe Shock - Danger" with the two highest voltages rated ‘XXX’". This experiment was designed so that the teacher would have to make a clear break away from the authority figure, the experimenter, in order to stop performing shocks. Today the field of psychology would deem this study highly unethical but, it revealed some extremely important findings. Findings showed that "two-thirds of this studies participants fall into the category of ‘obedient’ subjects, and that they represent ordinary people drawn from the working, managerial, and professional classes" (obedience to authority). After the release of his findings, many in the filed of psychology expressed concern for the ethics of Milgram’s design. One of the more vocal opponents was Diana Baumrind. Her concern was for the welfare of the participants and whether or not there was adequate measures to protect the participants. Milgram defends his experiment by explaining how more then adequately cared for the participants were. In a follow up survey, 84% of the subjects had positive feelings about being part of the research. A year after the study, Milgram connected the subjects to an impartial psychiatrist. Although he found, that extreme stress had been experienced by the subjects, no permeant trauma could be found to exist. There are also methodological considerations. Did the participants believe that the victim was really suffering? There has been many suggestions that Milgram’s subjects were merely pretending to believed that the learner was imperil. There is also the possibility that participants ‘may have assumed that shocks were painful but not harmful’. Nissani (1989) also points out that the "subjects probably believed that the university scientists were working under various legal and ethical restraints". It seems that had every reason to believe this, coming to participate in a scientific investigation at an impressive, well-equipped laboratory at Yale University. Another major criticism is the ecological validity of the studies. Many scientists have questioned whether the same results would be obtained today, or with other populations - eg, women. Remarkably however, similar results were obtained in the Netherlands in 1986, with female nurses as subjects. Although there have been many criticisms of Milgrams experiment, it has made contributions to our knowledge about Obedience to Authority. The obedience experiments are widely regarded as among the prime examples of how behaviour is powerfully responsive to situational variations. As Milgram stated, ‘often, it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act". Milgram’s experiment and following experiments have also given us insight into the role of personality in Obedience. According to Rotter (1971) interpersonal trust has potential theoretical relevance for obedience to authority. Haas (1966) also provided evidence that individual differences in hostility can account for variations in obedience. Finally Milgram’s experiment showed that training and conditioning causes the obedient person to shift responsibility for his actions onto the authority figure. Milgram called this transference "the agentic stage", and it was this that was partially responsible for the deaths of civilians by Nazi Germany. Although there are strong ethical issues related to Milgram’s work, his investigations into the area of obedience are of an important nature. We now know that psychologically normal individuals can be taken out of their particular and moral moulds and be made to bend to a morally unjustified authority figure. This insight into the human nature is an ominous one. Can we be made to do anything no matter how extreme? If one looks at Nazi Germany or present day Kosovo, the conclusion is a frightening yes. Bibliography: Domhoff, G.W. (2000). The misinterpretations of dreams. American Scientist, 88, 175-180. Retrieved March 13, 2001 from Infotrac database on the World Wide Web: http://www.swin.edu.lib.au. Gray, P.O. (1999). Psychology. New York: Worth. Wade, C., Travis, C. (1998). Psychology. (5 th ed.). New York: Longman. Westen, D. (1999). Psychology: mind, brain & culture. (2nd ed.). New York: J. Wiley.

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