Milgram: Studies of Authority and Obedience

Just Following Orders

French Police Records of French Jews Designated for Deportation Polish train engineer taking Jews

to camps

Nuremburg Trials

Milgram Movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCVlI-_4GZQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcvSNg0HZwk

British Replication

Milgram Study Design

Instructions from Experimenter

1. Please continue.2. The experiment requires that you continue.3. It is absolutely essential that you continue.4. You have no other choice, you must go on.

Designation Volts No. of Subjects Who Stopped at this Point

Slight 15-60 0Moderate 75-120 0Strong 135-180 0Very Strong 195-240 0Intense < 300 255-285 0Intense = 300 300 5Extreme Intensity 315-360 8Danger: Severe 375-420 1XXX 435 0XXX: Maximum Level 450 26

Compliance Rates

Milgram Movie

1. Experience watching—what do we feel?

2. Some people laugh watching this movie—why?

3. What are clues to “defection”? Facial, postural, verbal?

Turns body away from machine; hunches body into resistant, tackle posture; orients to learner rather than experimenter “I wouldn’t want that to happen to me.”

Milgram Movie, continued4. What are clues that a person will be a complier?

Facial, postural, verbal?

Deferential: Addresses Expert’r as “sir”Postural; fixed to machineFacial expression: Pleading

5. What is self-attitude of compliers?

Deprecatory: Apologizes for interrupting experiment, never shows anger, “I don’t want to be rude.”

Helpless; externalizes locus of control – “He wouldn’t let me (stop)”; “He said experiment must go on.”

Milgram Movie, continued

7. How do people cope with stress of situation? How do they attempt to calm themselves, soothe themselves?

Self-touching, smoking, seek reassurance from Expt’r, from learner.

6. What are signs that participants are stressed?

Sweating, shaking, laughing, hyperventilating.

8. How do participants’ stress responses, and coping, relate to babies in affect attunement movie/article?

Like infants, seek “communing” with Exptr, who responds with equivalent of neutral face. Stress leads to self-touching, to regroup, then to disregulation—laughing, breathing.

“I observed a mature and initially poised businessman enter the laboratory smiling and confident. Within 20 minutes he was reduced to a twitching, stuttering wreck who was rapidly approaching a point of nervous collapse. He constantly pulled on his earlobe, and twisted his hands. At one point he pushed his fist into his forehead and muttered: ‘Oh God, let’s stop it.’ And yet he continued to respond to every word of the experimenter, and obeyed to the end”.

Stanley Milgram, 1963

Emotional Strain in Milgram Study

Resistance and Conflicted Values: High Voltage Huck

Sub. 0123: He’s banging in there. I’m gonna chicken out. I’d like to continue, but I can’t do that to a man. I’m sorry, I can’t do that to a man.

What does this statement say about the psychological conflict leading to obedience?

Apologizes to crazy experimenterRegards himself as a coward

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Can't See orHear

Voice Only See and hear Direct Contact

Salience of Victim and Compliance

Highest: E. sits a few feet away from subject.

Middle: Gives orders over the phone

Least: Orders presented on tape recorder

Anything odd about “tape recorder” condition?

Salience of Experimenter/Authority and Compliance

1. Setting: prestigious university (Yale) vs. run-down area of town. Major or minor effect?

Compliance when all others in group fully comply? Compliance when one member of group defects?

90%

10%

Additional Variables and Compliance

2. Social context: Compliance in groups

Minor effect

Why do you think this is so?

3. Gender: Who complies more, men or women? No Difference

Orne and Holland Critique of Milgram

Ecological validity problem

Does Milgram situation translate to real world?

Did Deception Work?

Did subjects believe deception, and was deception (and entire design) believable?

Did Orne and Holland Read Milgram Article?

1. “Each S always draws straws with the other S (confed)…”

Problem? Actually, slips of paper with “Learner” “Teacher” written on them.

2. “…a shock described as 45 volts (is given to S) presumably so that he knows what shocks are like.”

Problem? Actually, serves to convince S that shock generator is real.

3. “…there is nothing that [the E] requires of the S that he could not as easily do himself…” i.e., why recruit S to be a teacher?

Problem? Cover story explains that want to see how different teacher-types affect learning.

Plausibility ProblemsSs have learned to be suspicious of psych experiments. ???

But this is 1960, students in 2010 believe in deceptions.

Ss were not college students; working adults

Scuttlebutt about experiment may have confounded results. ???

But how likely is it that any of Milgram’s Ss knew each other?

Unlikely that E and Confed played roles consistently. ???

Why is this unlikely? And how would variations affect outcome?

A. Why would “learning” task require such extreme, severe punishment?

B. Why would it be so crucial for arbitrary teacher to administer such severe treatment?

C. Why would E be so blasé about learner’s sufferings, screams, heart-attack vulnerability, ominous silence?

Glaring Incongruities in Milgram Study

Questions:

1. Should Ss have picked up on these oddities?

2. Did you pick up on them when first viewing or studying Milgram?

Demand Characteristics

1. Holland does studies showing Ss will comply with all kinds of bizarre requests—tacit belief that in credible experiment, nothing truly bad can/will happen.

2. Even under hypnosis, Ss distinguish between fake outcomes (stabbing with rubber knife) and real one (getting undressed in public).

3. Holland does exact replication of Milgram; 75% claim that they did not believe deception.

Recent Milgram-Study Replications

2002: British artist Rod Dickerson

2006: "The Heist"-- naive Ss agree to rob bank

2006: Jerry Burger (U. Missouri), "Basic Instincts" TV show

2009: BBC "How Violent Are You"

2010: French documentary "The Game of Death", guise of game show.

2010: Dateline NBC

2011: Discovery Channel

Social Forces and Conformity

"Stockholm Syndrome"

"Battered Wife Syndrome"

Patty Hearst → "Tanya"

Social Exclusion and Needs to BelongWilliams, Cheung, & Choi, (2008) JPSP

Need to belong is powerful.

Groups punish members by excluding them.

Ostracism understood as potent social tactic, in early childhood.

Function: Keeps groups cohesive, but devastating to targets.

Reactions to ostracism: depression, loneliness, anxiety, frustration, INVISIBILITY, helplessness.

Frustrates four basic needs: Belonging, self-esteem, control, meaning.

Cyberball: Williams, K. D., & Jarvis, B. (in press). Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers.

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Belonging Control Meaning Esteem Mood

Included

Partial Ost.

Total Ost

Effects of Ostracism on Basic NeedsWilliams, Cheung, & Choi, (2008) JPSP, Study 1

NOTE: Scores Reverse Coded

Ostracism and Conformity Williams, Cheung, & Choi, (2008) JPSP, Study 2

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Belonging Need Trials Conformed Percent Ss conformed1 or more times

Included

Excluded

Ss ostracized, not ostracized

Ss complete Asch-like visual task, designated the "last" responder

Social Exclusion, Need to Belong, and Behavioral MimicryLakin, Chartrand, & Arkin, Psych Science (2008)

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Excluded by In-Group

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In-Group Mimicry Confed

Out-Group Mimicry Confed

Behavioral Mimicry: People often automatically, unconsciously mimic behaviors of those with whom they interact.

Ss included or excluded by member of same group (same gender) or different group (diff. gender)

Ss interact with confed (same/diff gender) whose foot moves. Results?