Milgram's Principles On Why People Obey
Milgram (1974) gave reasons for obedience. Obedience is a type of influence causing a person to act person to act in response to a direct order from someone with perceived authority. In this essay I am going to explain Milgram’s reasons on why people obey.
The process of learning throughout life or when a person learns to adjust to a group and act like the group is called socialisation. It is a central influence on behaviour, beliefs action but the society that one is raised in can also affect the level if independence. Goldhagen (1996) blamed anti- Semitism rather that obedience. He said it was the ordinary Germans; (mainly Christians) who caused the holocaust because the traditional church teaching that blamed the Jews for the death of Christ. The German society had made people suspicious and …show more content…
aggressive towards Jews and this was part of everyday life.
The factors that create a physical or emotional feeling between the participant and the person being harmed increase the rate of obedience are called buffers. In other words it is providing a physical and psychological barrier between a person and consequences of their obedience. For example in Milgram’s study when participants had to force the learners hand onto a shock plate only 30% obeyed, whereas 40% obeyed when the teacher and the learner were in the same room. Buffers allow people to distance themselves emotionally from the consequences of their actions. When people try to justify themselves when something happens by putting it one someone else it called justification. Milgram (1974) found out that some obedient participants gave up responsibility for their actions, blaming the experimenter. If anything had happened to the learner, they thought it would have been the experimenter’s fault. Others had transferred the blame to the learner saying they were stupid and stubborn and they deserved to be shocked.
However Mandel (1998) said that Migram’s explanations of obedience were oversimplified and misleading especially when they were used to explain the Holocaust. He also suggests that Milgram’s monocausal explanations ignored many other more explanations for Holocaust events.
Hofling(1966)where most nurses obeyed a doctor’s instruction to administer a fatal dose of a fake drug to a patient. The nurses believed that the responsibility lies with the doctor so they obeyed the doctor although they knew it did not sound right. The nurses did this because they were told by the doctor and they could have easily blamed the doctor.
As well as the situation your put in your personality can also play a role in how obedient you are. In dispositional factors Adorno et al (1950) proposed that some people have an authoritarian personality. This makes them more likely to be obedient and also more likely to be biased. According to Adorno childhood experiences play a key role in a person’s personality. The harsh treatment by parents sometimes causes a child to develop hostile feelings towards them. However this hostility will remain unconscious as the child will bury her feelings to herself. In Bickman’s (1974) study investigating the effect of uniforms on obedience, we could see that people obeyed more when the when the person was wearing a guard’s uniform. When the experimenter wore civilian clothes the obedience rate went down .Which explains why people that people obey because in our day to day life we are taught to obey the authority.
When a person starts with small reasonable requests and they build up to larger orders it’s called gradual commitment. Looking at Milgram’s study, participants started off with small shocks going up by small amounts. If the participants went from 40volts to 200volts it was going to be different because they could have noticed the difference in volts and how high it was going. As the participants have already given lower shocks it becomes hard to resist the experimenter’s requirements to increase the shocks as the experiment continues.
When a person does things without thinking as long as the order comes from someone with power, we call that agentic state.
This might be a result of socialisation because from a very early age people are told what to do by their parents and carers. This means doing what we are told becomes a habit because we are always told what to do and what not to do by an adult figure when we are children, so we get used to obeying in that sense. (Milgram,1974) in his experiment the participants obeyed mostly because they believed that the experimenter had power. Milgram also believed that his participants were just following orders and they did not consider themselves responsible for what happened. This shows that people obey more when the person experimenting is wearing something that makes them stand out as high authority.
Another Agency theory explanation of why people obey authority figures to the extent that cruelty actions are committed. It also explains why US Army soldiers tortured Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib in 2003 and 2004 (Fiske et al. 2004). Brown, R. (1986). Social Forces in Obedience and Rebellion. Social Psychology: The Second Edition. New York: The Free
Press.
Cardwell, M and Flanagan, C. (2005) Psychology AS: The Complete Companion (Revised Edition) Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes (Publishers)Ltd
Milgram, S (1963). Behavioural study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67, pp, 371-8
Milgram, S (1974). Obedience to authority: an experimental view. New York: Harper and Row
Fiske S. T (2004). Social Beings. WileyNew York
http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444
The process of learning throughout life or when a person learns to adjust to a group and act like the group is called socialisation. It is a central influence on behaviour, beliefs action but the society that one is raised in can also affect the level if independence. Goldhagen (1996) blamed anti- Semitism rather that obedience. He said it was the ordinary Germans; (mainly Christians) who caused the holocaust because the traditional church teaching that blamed the Jews for the death of Christ. The German society had made people suspicious and …show more content…
aggressive towards Jews and this was part of everyday life.
The factors that create a physical or emotional feeling between the participant and the person being harmed increase the rate of obedience are called buffers. In other words it is providing a physical and psychological barrier between a person and consequences of their obedience. For example in Milgram’s study when participants had to force the learners hand onto a shock plate only 30% obeyed, whereas 40% obeyed when the teacher and the learner were in the same room. Buffers allow people to distance themselves emotionally from the consequences of their actions. When people try to justify themselves when something happens by putting it one someone else it called justification. Milgram (1974) found out that some obedient participants gave up responsibility for their actions, blaming the experimenter. If anything had happened to the learner, they thought it would have been the experimenter’s fault. Others had transferred the blame to the learner saying they were stupid and stubborn and they deserved to be shocked.
However Mandel (1998) said that Migram’s explanations of obedience were oversimplified and misleading especially when they were used to explain the Holocaust. He also suggests that Milgram’s monocausal explanations ignored many other more explanations for Holocaust events.
Hofling(1966)where most nurses obeyed a doctor’s instruction to administer a fatal dose of a fake drug to a patient. The nurses believed that the responsibility lies with the doctor so they obeyed the doctor although they knew it did not sound right. The nurses did this because they were told by the doctor and they could have easily blamed the doctor.
As well as the situation your put in your personality can also play a role in how obedient you are. In dispositional factors Adorno et al (1950) proposed that some people have an authoritarian personality. This makes them more likely to be obedient and also more likely to be biased. According to Adorno childhood experiences play a key role in a person’s personality. The harsh treatment by parents sometimes causes a child to develop hostile feelings towards them. However this hostility will remain unconscious as the child will bury her feelings to herself. In Bickman’s (1974) study investigating the effect of uniforms on obedience, we could see that people obeyed more when the when the person was wearing a guard’s uniform. When the experimenter wore civilian clothes the obedience rate went down .Which explains why people that people obey because in our day to day life we are taught to obey the authority.
When a person starts with small reasonable requests and they build up to larger orders it’s called gradual commitment. Looking at Milgram’s study, participants started off with small shocks going up by small amounts. If the participants went from 40volts to 200volts it was going to be different because they could have noticed the difference in volts and how high it was going. As the participants have already given lower shocks it becomes hard to resist the experimenter’s requirements to increase the shocks as the experiment continues.
When a person does things without thinking as long as the order comes from someone with power, we call that agentic state.
This might be a result of socialisation because from a very early age people are told what to do by their parents and carers. This means doing what we are told becomes a habit because we are always told what to do and what not to do by an adult figure when we are children, so we get used to obeying in that sense. (Milgram,1974) in his experiment the participants obeyed mostly because they believed that the experimenter had power. Milgram also believed that his participants were just following orders and they did not consider themselves responsible for what happened. This shows that people obey more when the person experimenting is wearing something that makes them stand out as high authority.
Another Agency theory explanation of why people obey authority figures to the extent that cruelty actions are committed. It also explains why US Army soldiers tortured Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib in 2003 and 2004 (Fiske et al. 2004). Brown, R. (1986). Social Forces in Obedience and Rebellion. Social Psychology: The Second Edition. New York: The Free
Press.
Cardwell, M and Flanagan, C. (2005) Psychology AS: The Complete Companion (Revised Edition) Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes (Publishers)Ltd
Milgram, S (1963). Behavioural study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67, pp, 371-8
Milgram, S (1974). Obedience to authority: an experimental view. New York: Harper and Row
Fiske S. T (2004). Social Beings. WileyNew York
http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444