Stanley Milgram : Obedience to Authority Or Just Conformity?

http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/02/stanley-milgram-obedience-to-authority.php

What psychological experiment could be so powerful that simply taking part might change your view of yourself and human nature?

What experimental procedure could provoke some people to profuse sweating and trembling, leaving 10% extremely upset, while others broke into unexplained hysterical laughter? What finding could be so powerful that it sent many psychologists into frenzied rebuttals?

Welcome to the sixth nomination for the top ten psychology studies and as you'll have guessed it's a big one. Hold on for controversy though, as this study has come in for considerable criticism with some saying its claims are wildly overblown.
Explaining human cruelty

Stanley Milgram's now famous experiments were designed to test obedience to authority (Milgram, 1963). What Milgram wanted to know was how far humans will go when an authority figure orders them to hurt another human being. Many wondered after the horrors of WWII, and not for the first time, how people could be motivated to commit acts of such brutality towards each other. Not just those in the armed forces, but ordinary people were coerced into carrying out the most cruel and gruesome acts.

But Milgram didn't investigate the extreme situation of war, he wanted to see how people would react under relatively 'ordinary' conditions in the lab. How would people behave when told to give an electrical shock to another person? To what extent would people obey the dictates of the situation and ignore their own misgivings about what they were doing?

The experimental situation into which people were put was initially straightforward. Participants were told they were involved in a learning experiment, that they were to administer electrical shocks and that they should continue to the end of the experiment. Told they would be the 'teacher and another person the 'learner', they sat in front of a machine with a number of dials labelled with steadily increasing voltages. This was the 'shock machine'. The third switch from the top was labelled: "Danger: Severe Shock", the last two simply: "XXX".

During the course of the experiment, each time the 'learner' made a mistake the participant was ordered to administer ever-increasing electrical shocks. Of course the learner kept making mistakes so the teacher (the poor participant) had to keep giving higher and higher electrical shocks, and hearing the resultant screams of pain until finally the learner went quiet.

Participants were not in fact delivering electrical shocks, the learner in the experiment was actually an actor following a rehearsed script. The learner was kept out of sight of the participants so they came to their own assumptions about the pain they were causing. They were, however, left in little doubt that towards the end of the experiment the shocks were extremely painful and the learner might well have been rendered unconscious. When the participant baulked at giving the electrical shocks, the experimenter - an authority figure dressed in a white lab coat - ordered them to continue.

Results

Before I explain the results, try to imagine yourself as the participant in this experiment. How far would you go giving what you thought were electrical shocks to another human being simply for a study about memory? What would you think when the learner went quiet after you apparently administered a shock labelled on the board "Danger: Severe Shock"? Honestly. How far would you go?

How ever far you think, you're probably underestimating as that's what most people do. Like the experiment, the results shocked. Milgram's study discovered people are much more obedient than you might imagine. 63% of the participants continued right until the end - they administered all the shocks even with the learner screaming in agony, begging to stop and eventually falling silent. These weren't specially selected sadists, these were ordinary people like you and me who had volunteered for a psychology study.

How can these results be explained?

At the time Milgram's study was big news. Milgram explained his results by the power of the situation. This was a social psychology experiment which appeared to show, beautifully in fact, how much social situations can influence people's behaviour.

The experiment set off a small industry of follow-up studies carried out in labs all around the world. Were the findings still true in different cultures, in slightly varying situations and in different genders (only men were in the original study)? By and large the answers were that even when manipulating many different experimental variables, people were still remarkably obedient. One exception was that one study found Australian women were much less obedient. Make of that what you will.

Fundamentally flawed?

Now think again. Sure, the experiment relies on the situation to influence people's behaviour, but how real is the situation? If it was you, surely you would understand on some level that this wasn't real, that you weren't really electrocuting someone, that knocking someone unconscious would not be allowed in a university study?

Also, people pick up considerable nonverbal cues from each other. How good would the actors have to be in order to avoid giving away the fact they were actors? People are adept at playing along even with those situations they know in their heart-of-hearts to be fake. The more we find out about human psychology, the more we discover about the power of unconscious processes, both emotional and cognitive. These can have massive influences on our behaviour without our awareness.

Assuming people were not utterly convinced on an unconscious level that the experiment was for real, an alternative explanation is in order. Perhaps Milgram's work really demonstrates the power of conformity. The pull we all feel to please the experimenter, to fit in with the situation, to do what is expected of us. While this is still a powerful interpretation from a brilliant experiment, it isn't what Milgram was really looking for.

Whether you believe the experiment shows what it purports to or not, there is no doubting that Milgram's work was some of the most influential and impressive carried out in psychology. It is also an experiment very unlikely to be repeated nowadays (outside of virtual reality) because of modern ethical standards. Certainly when I first came across it, my view of human nature was changed irrevocably. Now, thinking critically, I'm not so sure.

Image credit: Sharon Drummond

Ignorance Is Bliss When it Comes to Challenging Social Issues

By remaining unaware, people can justify trusting government, study finds

WASHINGTON - The less people know about important complex issues such as the economy, energy consumption and the environment, the more they want to avoid becoming well-informed, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

And the more urgent the issue, the more people want to remain unaware, according to a paper published online in APA’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology®.

“These studies were designed to help understand the so-called ‘ignorance is bliss’ approach to social issues,” said author Steven Shepherd, a graduate student with the University of Waterloo in Ontario. “The findings can assist educators in addressing significant barriers to getting people involved and engaged in social issues.”

Through a series of five studies conducted in 2010 and 2011 with 511 adults in the United States and Canada, the researchers described “a chain reaction from ignorance about a subject to dependence on and trust in the government to deal with the issue.”

In one study, participants who felt most affected by the economic recession avoided information challenging the government’s ability to manage the economy. However, they did not avoid positive information, the study said. This study comprised 197 Americans with a mean age of 35 (111 women and 89 men), who had received complex information about the economy and had answered a question about how the economy is affecting them directly.

To test the links among dependence, trust and avoidance, researchers provided either a complex or simple description of the economy to a group of 58 Canadians, mean age 42, composed of 20 men and 38 women. The participants who received the complex description indicated higher levels of perceived helplessness in getting through the economic downturn, more dependence on and trust in the government to manage the economy, and less desire to learn more about the issue.

Related
On the Perpetuation of Ignorance (PDF, 263KB)

“This is despite the fact that, all else equal, one should have less trust in someone to effectively manage something that is more complex,” said co-author Aaron C. Kay, PhD, of Duke University. “Instead, people tend to respond by psychologically ‘outsourcing’ the issue to the government, which in turn causes them to trust and feel more dependent on the government. Ultimately, they avoid learning about the issue because that could shatter their faith in the government.”

Participants who felt unknowledgeable about oil supplies not only avoided negative information about the issue, they became even more reluctant to know more when the issue was urgent, as in an imminent oil shortage in the United States, according the authors. For this study, 163 Americans, with a mean age of 32 (70 men and 93 women), provided their opinion about the complexity of natural resource management and then read a statement declaring the United States has less than 40 years’ worth of oil supplies. Afterward, they answered questions to assess their reluctance to learn more.

“Beyond just downplaying the catastrophic, doomsday aspects to their messages, educators may want to consider explaining issues in ways that make them easily digestible and understandable, with a clear emphasis on local, individual-level causes,” the authors said.

Another two studies found that participants who received complex information about energy sources trusted the government more than those who received simple information. For these studies, researchers questioned 93 (49 men and 44 women) Canadian undergraduate students in two separate groups.

The authors recommended further research to determine how people would react when faced with other important issues such as food safety, national security, health, social inequality, poverty and moral and ethical conflict, as well as under what conditions people tend to respond with increased rather than decreased engagement.

Article: “On the Perpetuation of Ignorance: System Dependence, System Justification, and the Motivated Avoidance of Sociopolitical Information,” Steven Shepherd, University of Waterloo, and Aaron C. Kay, PhD, Duke University, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 120, No. 2.

Steven Shepherd can be contacted by email

Dr. Aaron Kay can be contacted by phone at (919) 660-3737 or by email

The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world's largest association of psychologists. APA's membership includes more than 154,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of promoting health, education and human welfare.

 

Source: http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2011/11/ignorance.aspx

Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View

http://www.harpercollins.com/browseinside/index.aspx?isbn13=9780061765216

"The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: 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."
- Stanley Milgram, 1974

In the 1960s Stanley Milgram carried out a series of experiments in which human subjects were given progressively more painful electro-shocks in a careful calibrated series to determine to what extent people will obey orders even when they knew them to be painful and immoral-to determine how people will obey authority regardless of consequences. These experiments came under heavy criticism at the time but have ultimately been vindicated by the scientific community. This book is Milgram′s vivid and persuasive explanation of his methods.

Mindsight: The New Science of Transformation

A groundbreaking book on the healing power of "mindsight," the potent skill that is the basis for both emotional and social intelligence. Mindsight allows you to make positive changes in your brain–and in your life.
Is there a memory that torments you, or an irrational fear you can't shake?
Do you sometimes become unreasonably angry or upset and find it hard to calm down?
Do you ever wonder why you can't stop behaving the way you do, no matter how hard you try?
Are you and your child (or parent, partner, or boss) locked in a seemingly inevitable pattern of conflict?

What if you could escape traps like these and live a fuller, richer, happier life? This isn't mere speculation but the result of twenty-five years of careful hands-on clinical work by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. A Harvard-trained physician, Dr. Siegel is one of the revolutionary global innovators in the integration of brain science into the practice of psychotherapy. Using case histories from his practice, he shows how, by following the proper steps, nearly everyone can learn how to focus their attention on the internal world of the mind in a way that will literally change the wiring and architecture of their brain.

read more >>

The Psychology of Prejudice and Discrimination

by Bernard E. Whitley, Mary E. Kite

Synopsis
This textbook by Whitley and Kite (both of Ball State U.) aims to provide undergraduate students with an overview of psychological research and theory on the nature, causes, and amelioration of prejudice and discrimination. It covers the standard topics, but was also written with the goal of covering important topics not found in similar texts. To this end, the authors have included chapters on research methods and how methods influence conclusions about the issues studied, the development of prejudice in children, and the nature of discrimination and its relationship to prejudice.

Biography
Bernard Whitley is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychological Science at Ball State University. His research focuses the role of individual difference variables in prejudice. He is author, coauthor, or coeditor of four other books. He and Dr. Kite have collaborated together on numerous research projects.

Mary Kite is Professor of Psychological Science at Ball State University. Her research focuses on stereotyping and prejudice toward women, gays and lesbians, and older adults and has published widely in those areas. She is a past president of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology and currently serves as Secretary-Treasurer of the Midwestern Psychological Association.

Heuristics and Biases

The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment

Edited by

Thomas Gilovich
Cornell University, New York
Dale Griffin
Stanford University, California
Daniel Kahneman
Princeton University, New Jersey

Judgment pervades human experience. Do I have a strong enough case to go to trial? Will the Fed change interest rates? Can I trust this person? This book examines how people answer such questions. How do people cope with the complexities of the world economy, the uncertain behavior of friends and adversaries, or their own changing tastes and personalities? When are people's judgments prone to bias, and what is responsible for their biases? This book compiles psychologists' best attempts to answer these important questions.

Genes, Behavior, and the Social Environment:

Moving Beyond the Nature/Nurture Debate

Over the past century, we have made great strides in reducing rates of disease and enhancing people’s general health. Public health measures such as sanitation, improved hygiene, and vaccines; reduced hazards in the workplace; new drugs and clinical procedures; and, more recently, a growing understanding of the human genome have each played a role in extending the duration and raising the quality of human life.

But research conducted over the past few decades shows us that this progress, much of which was based on investigating one causative factor at a time--often, through a single discipline or by a narrow range of practitioners--can only go so far.

Recent knowledge, including much of what has so far been gleaned from the sequencing of the human genome, is pushing scientists to look beyond single agents of health and disease. By breaking out of their disciplinary “silos” and embracing a broader systems view, based on the understanding that health outcomes are the result of multiple determinants—social, behavioral, and genetic--that work in concert through complex interactions, the best health outcomes from research may be yet to come.

Genes, Behavior, and the Social Environment examines a number of well-described gene-environment interactions, reviews the state of the science in researching such interactions, and recommends priorities not only on research itself but also on its workforce, resource, and infrastructural needs.

The report also identifies gaps in knowledge and barriers that hamper the integration of social, behavioral, and genetic research, concluding that a number of far-reaching changes, specifically in the development of transdisciplinary research, are required if significant strides are to be made in the future. Transdisciplinary reserach offers a mechanism to achieve a far greater understanding of how interactions among social, behavioral, and genetic factors affect health and illness.

The Paradox of Choice

Why More Is Less

Barry Schwartz is the Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore College. He is the author of several books, including The Battle for Human Nature: Science, Morality and Modern Life and The Costs of Living: How Market Freedom Erodes the Best Things in Life. His articles have appeared in many of the leading journals in his field, including the American Psychologist. He lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Barry Schwartz: Homepage

Barry Schwartz: Books

Book Description

Whether we're buying a pair of jeans, ordering a cup of coffee, selecting a long-distance carrier, applying to college, choosing a doctor, or setting up a 401(k), everyday decisions -- both big and small -- have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming abundance of choice with which we are presented.

As Americans, we assume that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware of excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis, anxiety, and perpetual stress. And, in a culture that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical depression.

In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains at what point choice -- the hallmark of individual freedom and self-determination that we so cherish -- becomes detrimental to our psychological and emotional well-being. In accessible, engaging, and anecdotal prose, Schwartz shows how the dramatic explosion in choice -- from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs -- has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution. Schwartz also shows how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse.

By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counter intuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on those that are important and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make.

Jonathan Haidt : What Makes People Vote Republican?

...the second rule of moral psychology is that morality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way. When Republicans say that Democrats "just don't get it," this is the "it" to which they refer.

Jonathan Haidt is Associate Professor in the Social Psychology area of the Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia, where he does research on morality and emotion, and how they vary across cultures. He is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom.

Links:

"Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion: A Talk with Jonathan Haidt"

Beyond Edge:
Jonathan Haidt's Homepage
YourMorals.org Moral Foundations Theory Homepage
Civil Politics Homepage
The Happiness Hypothesis