Question

Chapter 13 Questions:

What do Milgram’s experiments tell us about the average person’s willingness to obey an authority figure?

Answer 1

Stanley Milgram , a psychologist at Yale University conducted several experiments to see how far people would go in obeying an instruction given by an authority figure, and how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities.

In his experiment, the participants were paired with another individual, forming a setting of 3 individuals- the learner (always the Confederate of Milgram), the teacher (the participant), and the experimenter dressed in a gray lab coat, played by an actor of Milgram. The experiment setup was such that in a room the participant was strapped to a chair with electrodes attached to his arms, and the teacher and researcher went into a room next door that contained an electric shock generator and a row of 30 switches marked from 15 volts (Slight Shock) to 375 volts (Danger: Severe Shock) to 450 volts.
The learner (confederate) was required to learn a list of word pairs given to him, the teacher (participant) then tests him by naming a word and asking him to recall its pair from a list of four possible choices. The teacher is supposed to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time. The learner gave mainly wrong answers on purpose, and for each wrong answer the teacher gave him an electric shock. When the teacher refused to administer a shock, the experimenter was to give a series of orders(prods) to ensure they continued. There were four prods in total and if one was not obeyed, then the experimenter was supposed to read out the next prod, and so on.

The results of the experiment were as follows:

65% of participants (teachers) continued to the highest level of 450 volts. All the participants continued to 300 volts.

It can be concluded from the findings that people have a tendency of obeying orders from authority figures if they recognize their authority as morally right and/or legally based. The response to legitimate authority figures is learned in a variety of situations throughout life, such as in the family, school, and workplace.

Based on the findings, Milgram tried to explain the behavior of the participants by suggesting the AGENCY THEORY in 1974. According to this theory, people can behave according to two states when they are in a social situation:

• The autonomous state – people direct their own actions, and they take responsibility on themselves for the results of those actions.
• The agentic state – people allow others to direct their actions and then pass off the responsibility for the consequences to the person giving the orders. In other words, they act as agents for another person’s will.

Milgram further explained that following two things must be there for a person to enter the agentic state:

• The person giving the orders is perceived as being qualified to direct other people’s behavior. In other words, they are seen as legitimate.

• The person being ordered about is able to believe that the authority will accept responsibility for what happens.

Therefore, the experiments of Milgram and the agency theory tell us that an average person is willing to obey an authority figure when he/she believes that the authority will take responsibility for the consequences of theose actions. For example, when participants were reminded that the responsibility for their own actions is on them, almost none of them were prepared to obey. In contrast, many participants who were refusing to increase the shock decided to do that only if the experimenter said that he would take the responsibility of giving those shocks.
Also, an average person is likely to obey when the authority figue is seen as legitimate and qualified to give orders. In other words, they will obey those who have the right to give orders to others.

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