11. Obedience to authority

It is true of nearly all societies that certain people are given power and authority over others. In our society, for example, parents, teachers, and managers are invested with varying degrees of authority. Most of the time, this does not cause any problems. If the doctor tells us to take some tablets three times a day, we accept that he or she is the expert. As a result, we simply do as we are told without thinking any more about it. However, an issue that has been of interest to psychologists for many years is to work out how far most people are willing to go in their obedience to authority. VtfYrat happens if ^/ou are asked by a person in authority to do something that you think is wrong? Tne'oe^iaiumiTcs^fi^¹?! OT^isAS,sjtftwa&carried out by Stanley MilgramYl974).

Stanley Milgram

In Milgram's studies at Yale University, pairs of participants were given the roles of a teacher and a learner for a simple learning test. The "teacher" was asked to give electric shocks to the "learner" every time the wrong answer was given, and to increase the shock intensity each time. At 180 volts, the learner yelled "1 can't stand the pain", and by 270 volts the response had become an agonised scream. If the teacher was unwilling to give the shocks, the experimenter urged him or her to continue.

Do you think you would be willing to give the maximum (and potentially deadly) 450-volt shock in this study? Milgram found that everyone he asked denied that they personally would do any such thing, and psychiatrists predicted that only one person in a thousand would go on to the 450-volt stage. In fact, about 50% of Milgram\s participants gave the maximum shock—which is 500 times as many people as the expert psychiatrists had predicted!

One of the most striking cases of total obedience was that of Pasqual Gino, a 43-year-old water inspector of Italian descent. Towards the end of the experiment, he found himself thinking, "Good God, he's dead. Well, here we go, we'll finish him. And I just continued all the way through to 450 volts

Milgram found that there were two main ways in which -obedience to authority could be reduced: (1) increasing the obviousness of the learner's plight; or (2) reducing the authority or irnfluence of the experimenter. The first way was studied by comparing obedience in four situations (the percentage of participants who were totally obedient is given in brackets):

• Remote feedback: the victim could not be heard or seen (66%).

• Voice feedback: the victim could be heard but not seen (62%).

• Proximity: the victim was only one metre away from the| participant (40%)

• Touch-proximity: this was like the proximity condition, I except that the participant had to force the learner's hand onto] the shockplate (30%).

Milgram reduced the authority of the experimenter by carrying out the experiment in a run-down office building rathe* than at YaieUniversity. He found that the percentage of obedient participants went down from 65% at Yale University to 48% щ teTMr-'town oilice Wlding. The influence of the experimente was reduced by having him give his orders by telephone rathe than having him sitting a few feet away from the participant This reduced obedience from 65% to 20.5%.

Ethical issues in Milgram’s work.

The Milgram wor caused a lot of controversy. There are various ethical issue involved. As you probably guessed, the learner did nc actually receive any shocks, so that was not a probler However, many of the participants were put into a ver distressed state. As one person reported, "I observed a i тй initially poised businessman enter the laboratory smilir and confident. Within 20 minutes he was reduced to j twitching, stuttering wreck, who was rapidly approaching | point of nervous collapse." It is now accepted that it is ethical to put participants into such a state, and this line research has been abandoned. However, 84% of those wh took part in Milgram's studies said they were glad to haij done so, and only 1 % expressed negative feelings.

Human nature.

The other major controversy in Milgram's work concerned what the findings seem to tell us about human nature. They suggest that about half of the human race is cruel and sadistic. Evidence against this comes from the behaviour of the obedient participants. It would have been disturbing if they had looked relaxed and happy while giving severe electric shocks. In fact, however, most of them showed obvious tension and unease as they tried to come to grips with the moral conflict between obeying authority and respecting the rights of the learner.

Philip Zimbardo

In the 1960s, there were numerous reports of problems in American prisons. Many of these reports referred to brutal attacks by prison warders on the prisoners in their care. Why did this brutality occur? One possibility is that prison warders tend to have aggressive or sadistic personalities. Another possibility is that the social environment of prisons, including a rigid power structure, is mainly responsible.

Philip Zimbardo (1973) decided to study this issue in what has come to be known as the Stanford prison experiment!^ this experiment, emotionally stable members of society agreed to act as "warders" and "prisoners" in amock prisom Zimbardo was interested in seeing whether the hostility found in many real prisons would also be found in his mock prison. If hostility were found in spite of not using sadistic warders, this would suggest that the social environment of prisons creates hostility.

In the Stanford prison experiment, the prisoners could only eat at specified times. They needed the permission of a warder to do almost everything, including writing letters and going to the toilet. In all, there were 16 prison rules which the warders were asked to enforce.

What went on within the mock prison was so unpleasant I and dangerous that the entire experiment had to be stopped after six days instead of the intended fourteen. Violence and rebellion [ broke out within two days of the start. ТЪе prisoners ripped off) their clothing, and shouted and cursed a£ the warders. In return, I the guards put down this rebellion violently using fire extinguishers. They also played the prisoners off against one! another and harassed them almost constantly. One of the J prisoners showed such severe symptoms of emotional disturbance (disorganised thinking, uncontrollable crying and! screaming) that he had to be released after only one day. On the I fourth day, two more prisoners showed symptoms of severe) disturbance and were released.

There were some interesting changes in the behaviour of the warders and prisoners over time. The prisoners became mor and moreisubdued and submissive, often slouching and keeping their eyes fixed on the ground. At the same time, the use oi| force, harassment, and aggression by the warders increased steadily from day to day. It seemed that the warders began t<j enjoy the power to control other people, and the passive reaction of the prisoners encouraged them to exert more and more powe What is the main message of the Stanford prison experiment According to Zimbardo, the experiment showed the greai importance of the power structure within prisons. In his owf words, "Power is the most important variable in socia psychology and the most neglected."

Ethical issues.

Many critics argued that it was iu| acceptable ethically for Zimbardo to have exposed participants to such degradation and hostility, Can one rea justify a study in which four participants had to be releas because of "extreme depression, disorganised thinker uncontrollable crying and fits оГ rage"? Was it геааор&ЬДе for Zimbardo to stand by whjfe the guards forced prisoners to clean toilets with their bare hands, hosed them with fire extinguishers, and made them do push-ups with a guard standing on their back?

In reply, Zimbardo pointed out that he had tried to reduce any negative effects..on the participants by holding day-long debriefing sessions, in which the moral conflicts posed by the study were discussed. He also pointed out that most of the participants reported that they had learned valuable things about themselves. It is true that the study .was of value, but it is not clear that this begins to justify^cne level of degradation and physical assault that happened.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of Zimbardo's work?

PLUS

He showed that giving people power can have a great effect on their behaviour, leading them to behave in ways that they previously thought unacceptable.

MINUS

The mock warders may simply have pretended to be aggressive, because that is the way real warders are thought to behave; however, the physical' ■ abuse and harassment shown by the warders Went beyond what would have been expected from, mere play-actingl

There are serious ethical problems with his experiment.

Hofling

One of the limitations of the Stanford prison experiment is that it was carried out in a mock situation. However, evidence of obedience to authority in a real-life situation was obtained by Hofling (1966). Twenty-two nurses were phoned up by someone who claimed to be Dr Smith. He asked the nurse to check that a drug called Astroten was available. When the nurses did this, they saw on the bottle that the maximum dosage of this drug was supposed to be lOmg. When they reported back to Dr Smith, he told them to give 20mg of the drug to a patient.

There were two good reasons why the nurses should have refused to do as they were instructed. First, the dose was considerably higher than the maximum safe dose. Second, the nurses did not know Dr Smith, and they were only supposed to take instructions from doctors they knew.

However, the nurses' training had led them to obey instructions from doctors: there is a clear power structure with doctors in a more powerful position than nurses. As you have probably guessed, the nurses were more influenced by the power structure than by the two hospital regulations they were meant to obey. All but one of the nurses did as Dr Smith instructed.

The findings of this study are important. They indicate that there is considerable obedience to authority in a naturalistic situation, in which the participants were unaware that an experiment was being carried out.