Lesson 4 Obedience 1. Do as you’re told! Strangely enough, most people do do as they are told, and psychologists’ studies reveal just how far people will go to do as they are told. Definition Obedience is responding as instructed to a direct order. Sometimes, this involves doing something that the responder would not normally do or that the responder sees as unacceptable. Obedience is not the same as conformity. Conformity does not have the element of instruction – being told to do something directly; it is just the situation in which people act as others act.

2. Studies of Obedience

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Milgram’s Studies These are probably some of the most often quoted studies in psychology. In 1963 Milgram advertised in a local newspaper for male participants in a study at Yale University (one of America’s most famous and prestigious) and offered a small payment (which is quite normal). The people who responded to the advertisement were told that the study was looking at the effectiveness of punishment on learning, and that they were to work with another participant. The other participant was really a confederate of the researchers so he knew what was really happening. At the beginning the pair drew lots to see who would be the “learner” and who would be the “teacher” in the study. The lottery was fixed so that the real participant always became the teacher. The participant watched as the learner was strapped into a machine which appeared to give electric shocks: at this point the learner mentioned that he had a weak heart and then he was placed in another area, partitioned from the teacher, at a control box which appeared to deliver the shocks. The teacher was instructed to deliver shocks every time the learner gave a wrong answer to a question. The control box was designed so that the switches were marked from low voltages (15 volts) to high ones (450 volts). At 350v the switches were clearly marked “danger, severe shock”. The shocks had to start off at low levels and increase by 15v every time the learner made a mistake. As the “shocks” increased a recording was played to give the impression that the learner was being shocked, calling out a little at first, shouting louder as the voltage increased, asking to stop, screaming, then eventually falling silent at 315 volts. Despite the appearance of death, participants continued to administer shocks up to the full 450 volts.

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1. How do you feel Milgram treated his participants? Note any ways you consider that he mistreated them. 2. Why do you think Milgram advertised for males for the study? Copyright © The Lutterworth Press 2003

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The participants displayed varying levels of distress during the session, some of them were overcome with distress. The researchers gave them encouragement to continue if they started to “flag”. They used phrases such as “The experiment requires that you continue”, and carried on as though all was acceptable. 65% of the participants administered shocks up to the full level of 450 volts. Some of them were doing so even though the “learner” had been silent before that point – they possibly thought they were delivering shocks to dead man! This study showed that people would obey; in fact the participants obeyed much more than anyone at the time thought they would. It was often referred to when war atrocities were examined. Massacres, attempted genocides, the killing of innocent civilians and the tortures administered to people during a number of wars, were explained in terms of obedience to commands. Trials of war crimes after the second world war often heard the defendant claiming to have been “only following orders”.

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Varying Levels of Obedience Before moving on, make some predictions about the effects that certain factors may have on obedience. Look at the situations below and write “increase” or “decrease” next to each one to predict which way you think each factor will affect obedience: 1. If someone else says “I’ll take full responsibility for the consequences” 2. If the “study” appears to be conducted by ordinary people who are not university researchers. 3. If the researcher does not wear a laboratory coat 4. If the “learner” is in the same room as the “teacher” You can compare your answers to the findings in the following section: the corrupt answers are given in the Feedback section.

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Factors affecting obedience But what of the occasions when people did not obey in Milgram’s studies? In later studies Milgram found that levels of obedience varied according to certain factors: i. Responsibility. If the participant was asked to instruct someone else to give the shock then obedience increased. If the participant was asked to hold the “learner’s” hand on the device to receive the shock the level of obedience fell. If the researcher assured the participant that he (the researcher) would take all responsibility for the consequences then the obedience level rose. It was concluded that being able to psychologically “off-load” the responsibility would make obedience more likely. This echoes the war trial plea “I was only following orders”. ii. Status of the experiment. Milgram repeated the study in an office block in a run-down area of the town and found that the rate of obedience fell. It was concluded that the connection with Yale University gave prestige to the “study” and that prestige was a factor that affected obedience. The parallel with the armed forces is that a member of the ranks is more likely to follow an order from a General than from a Corporal. iii. Presence of an authority figure. Participants were more likely to obey a researcher in a laboratory coat than one who was not. As the university gave Copyright © The Lutterworth Press 2003

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prestige to the “study” so the white coat seems to give prestige to the authority figure. iv. Proximity of the victim. If the “learner” was in the same room as the “teacher” then the level of obedience fell. Presumably this can be extended to include the idea the if someone is closer to the consequences of his or her own actions then obedience to an undesirable order is less likely. Hofling’s Study This took place in a real hospital with real nurses as the subject of the study. Doctors have the legal responsibility for patients in their care in hospital, so it is for them to make decisions about the treatment, though nurses are often the ones to carry out the decisions. The authority relationships between doctors and nurses are often, therefore, interesting social situations. A young, inexperienced doctor may often turn to an experienced nurse for advice before making a decision and hospital doctors who are undergoing training are often the butt of nurses’ jokes about their competence. In the Hofling study a nurse was telephoned by a researcher claiming to be Dr Smith who asked the nurse to administer 20 milligrams of “Astroten” (not a real drug) to a particular patient and promised to come over in ten minutes to sign the authorisation for the drug. Nurses are not allowed to take instructions over the telephone in this way but 21 out of 22 nurses who were studied complied. They found the drug along with the others but the label clearly stated that the maximum daily dosage was 20 milligrams. Again, the 21 nurses all prepared the 20mg dose and would have administered it, but an accomplice of the researchers observed the nurses and stopped them at this point to explain the true situation to them.

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Would you have obeyed the instruction if you had been the nurse? 22 different nurses had the situation described to them whereby a doctor phones and asks them to administer the drug, promising to come over in ten minutes. They were asked if they would administer the drug and all of them said “no”. Role expectations seem to be the clearest reason for obedience in this case. It is the role of the doctor to give orders about treatment and it is the role of the nurse to carry out instructions. The doctor’s authority is made legitimate by the hospital system and so it is much more likely that nurses will obey him. The “lab. coat effect” was also noted, it is more likely that even patients would obey “doctor’s orders” even though doctors have no legitimate power over them (i.e. power given to them by the organisation).

3. The ethics of obedience studies Remember that “ethics” refers to “ A consideration of what is acceptable or right behaviour in pursuit of a .... scientific goal” Were Milgram’s and Hofling’s studies ethical? If you think not, give some idea of what you consider was unethical about them. If you have already studied the Methods of Investigation section then you may like to compare what you learned in it with what you wrote in the box above, Copyright © The Lutterworth Press 2003

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before continuing. Have any of the ethical principles listed in that section been broken in the studies? Did you manage to identify them in your answer? Psychologists would be concerned about the following features of those studies: 1. Consent. The participants in the studies (“teachers” in Milgram’s, nurses in Hofling’s) did not give consent to be studied. Even if Milgram’s participants signed a consent form before becoming a “teacher” that would have related to a study which did not really exist, not the study in which they were really taking part. It is also established practice to advise participants that they can withdraw from studies whenever they wish, rather than to intimidate them into continuing. 2. Conduct. The participants in Milgram’s studies were put into a situation in which there was a high possibility of stress; indeed one of them was reported to have had “seizures” and many of them acted in a distressed way. Indeed the physical well being of some participants could have been jeopardised by heart trouble or other disorders. The researchers in Hofling’s study were interfering with the professional conduct of the nurses. They were also undermining their sense of self-esteem by “tricking” them into realising how less competent they were than they may have thought – there are more compassionate ways of helping people to uncover their weaknesses than this. 3. Choice of method. Considering the level of deception and stress would it not have been possible to study real obedience situations that would not have been created by the researchers, and so remove the ethical consequences? The armed forces, health organisations, police and other organisations have highly structured systems that should have provided opportunities for study. Milgram did follow these criticisms with a survey of his participants and reported that all of them agreed that the level of deception was acceptable for the situation and that the knowledge gained justified the deception and stress. None of the participants reported any long-term effects from the study though many reported a type of depression from discovering their own potential for obedience. It must also be remembered that ethical considerations were not as commonly considered in 1963 as they are now.

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Can you think of one positive point and one negative point about the two studies? Try it before reading the next section.

4. Evaluation of obedience studies

As well as the ethical dilemmas presented above, the studies have some practical aspects that need to be evaluated. i. Artificial. The Milgram studies were conducted in laboratory type conditions and we must ask if this tells us much about real-life situations. We obey in a variety of real-life situations that are far more subtle than instructions to give people electric shocks and it would be interesting to see what factors operate in everyday obedience. The sort of situation Milgram investigated would be more suited to a military context. Hofling’s study was carried out in a real-life situation and so has far more ecological validity (see the Methods of Investigation section). Copyright © The Lutterworth Press 2003

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ii. Sample. The participants in Milgram’s study were all male. Do the findings transfer to females? The participants in Hofling’s study were all likely to have been female. Would the findings transfer to males? In Milgram’s study the participants were self-selecting. This is because they became participants only by electing to respond to a newspaper advertisement (selecting themselves). They may also have a “typical volunteer personality” – not all the newspaper readers responded so perhaps it takes this personality type to do so. Finally, they probably all had a similar income since they were willing to spend some hours working for a given amount of money. In Hofling’s study we may even ask if all nurses have a common personality type. It has to be said that Hofling’s study was conducted in 22 different hospitals but they all had similar rules. iii. The Times They Are A Changin’. The Milgram studies were published in 1963, Hofling’s in 1966. It is likely that attitudes towards obedience change from society to society and from time to time. It is also likely that there was a higher level of obedience in general in the early 1960’s when these studies were carried out. The title of this section is the name of a song written by Bob Dylan who was labelled a “protest singer” (among other things) at that time. The idea of protest against the establishment and authority was becoming popular during that time, but most people were not protesters. Today, expressing opinions against authority and power figures (e.g. against the Royal Family) is quite commonplace but in the early 1960’s it was still a novelty. It may be that studies like Milgram’s and Hofling’s carried out today would not find such high levels of obedience to authority. iv. Landmarks. There is little doubt that these studies opened the eyes of psychologists and others to the level of obedience which humans may be capable of, and they acted as landmarks in our progress towards an understanding of the influence of social influence. v. Cultural Differences As with conformity, we have to remember that some societies have higher levels of obedience as a norm and the findings from research are not necessarily applicable to all societies.

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Feedback

Varying Levels of Obedience 1. Increase 2. Decrease 3. Decrease 4. Decrease

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