Perspectives on Obedience to Authority: The ... - Wiley Online Library

Journal of Social Issues. Vol. 51. No. 3 . 1995. pp. 1-19

Perspectives on Obedience to Authority: The Legacy of the Milgram Experiments Arthur G. Miller Miami UniversiQ

Barry E. Collins and Diana E. Brief University of California at Los Angeles

The experiments of Stanley Milgram on obedience to authority have achieved a truly remarkable visibility. one that is rare in the social sciences. Although conducted over 30 years ago, Milgram’s research is currently one of the most widely cited programs of studies in psychology. From their inception, the obedience studies have also been controversial. For many, they reveal something very illuminating about human nature. They have also been, however, the recipient of scathing ethical and methodological criticism. While the controversial features of Milgram’s research have been well documented, the substantive core of Milgram’s concern, namely obedience to malevolent authority, has not received correspondingly careful attention. The main objectives of the articles in this issue are to track the progress of the impact of the obedience research in contemporary research and thought, and to suggest directionsfor the future. This introduction to the present issue provides an empirical and conceptual overview of Milgram’s research and concludes by highlighting some major themes in the papers to follow. I just said to myself, my God, what is this? What’s happening here? How could people do this to other people? (Dr. Leon Bass, an American soldier upon arriving at the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945) This article describes a procedure for the study of destructive obedience in the laboratory. It consists of ordering a naive S to administer increasingly more severe punishment to a victim in the context of a learning experiment. (Stanley Milgram, 1963, p. 371) Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Arthur G. Miller. Department of Psychology, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056, or to Barry E. Collins. Department of Rychoiogy, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024. 1 W22-4537/95/woO-ooO1$03.00/1 0 1Y95 The Sociely fur the Psychological Study of Social Ir~ues

Miller et al.

2

Introduction

In terms of a criterion that many in academia would value above all others, namely to have one's work and ideas make an impact-upon students, scholars from a host of academic disciplines, authors, researchers, critics (both friend and foe), and the lay reader-Stanley Milgram's' experiments on obedience to authority are surely among the most celebrated in the history of psychology (Milgram, 1963, 1965, 1974). In a virtually seamless flow of academic debate and published commentary, the Milgram experiments, from their first appearance over 30 years ago, have stimulated thought as has perhaps no other single research program. The main objectives of the articles in this issue are to track the progress of that impact in contemporary research and to suggest directions for the future. As Elms (this issue) suggests, the towering impact of the Milgram obedience experiments clearly rests upon the very sobering social issues raised by the research itself. It is the phenomenon of destructive obedience-more specifically, the prospect, raised by Milgram's extensive research program, that such behavior could be elicited from very large numbers of seemingly normal, average persons-that was, and remains, the core issue. Milgram, and a generation of subsequent commentators, have drawn parallels not only to Nazi Germany, but also to an array of scenarios involving destructive obedience, such as the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, the mass suicide, under the directive of Jim Jones, at Jonestown, and to crimes of obedience more generally (e.g., Darley, 1992; Kelman & Hamilton, 1989). Before previewing the content of this issue in more detail, let us step back, for a moment, to examine the foundation upon which this issue is built: Milgram's paradigm, his observations, and his conceptual analyses. The Beginning A short article with an innocuous title-"Behavioral Study of Obedience"-appeared in a 1963 issue of the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology that was destined to change the landscape of modem social science. For many, these are among the most significant studies on human behavior ever performed (e.g., Brown, 1985)-but for others, these are experiments that should not have even been performed (e.g., Baumrind, 1985). Contributing to the extraordinarily rapid visibility and controversial status of this research were its association with the Nazi Holocaust and the intense conflict experienced by many of the research participants. In this first publication (of a three-year programmatic series of experiments), Milgram framed the obedience project in the context of the Nazi extermination policy: 'Stanley Milgram was born in 1933 in New York City and died in December 1984

Perspectives on Obedience: Introduction

3

Obedience, as a determinant of behavior, is of particular relevance to our time. It has been reliably established that from 1933-45, millions of innocent persons were systematically slaughtered on command. Gas chambers were built, death camps were guarded, daily quotas of corpses were produced with the same efficiency as the manufacture of appliances. These inhumane policies may have originated in the mind of a single person, but they could only be carried out on a massive scale if a very large number of people obeyed orders. (1963, p. 371)

Milgram’s decision to frame the obedience project in the shadow of the Holocaust was of paramount significance because of the powerful emotions and intellectual controversies associated with efforts to understand the Holocaust itself. From their inception, the obedience experiments were seemingly endowed with an undeniably inflammatory, provocative essence, qualities that were, in an important sense, distracting in terms of Milgram’s primary objectives. Milgram described an experimental paradigm for studying obedience to malevolent authority (see Elms, this issue). Following in the tradition of the famous conformity studies of his mentor, Solomon Asch, Milgram exposed participants to a simple, but intense decisional conflict: To either remain defiant or to yield to an experimenter’s demands at the expense of violating one’s personal values.

The Experimental Analysis of Authority Milgram took advantage of the context of a psychological experiment with its “built-in” hierarchical role structure. The role of “Authority” was played by an experimenter, highly formal in appearance and manner. Subjects were instructed to start at the first shock lever (15 volts) and increase the punishment by one shock level for each of the learner’s (confederate’s) mistakes. In response to hesitation on the part of the subject, the experimenter responded, if necessary, with one of four increasingly strident prods: Prod Prod Prod Prod

I-Please continue, or please go on. 2-The experiment requires that you go on. 3-It is absolutely essential that you continue. 4-You have no other choice, you must go on

These prods are, in an important sense, the most important methodological feature in Milgram’s paradigm. Prods 3 and 4, in particular, distinguish this type of experiment from all other studies of social influence, for these are literally commands or orders that, if obeyed, ultimately resulted in the learner appearing to receive intolerable pain. Examined out of context, of course, these prods are falsehoods and manifestly unenforceable. However, in the context of the obedience paradigm as construed by the participants themselves, they influenced large numbers of participants to shock a protesting individual-protests that escalated, in some instances, to the (apparent) point of no longer responding to the task. The traditional analyses of the Milgram experiments, including Mil-

Miller et al.

4

gram’s own observations, have focused upon social influence that has its origin in the authority/subordinate relationship between the experimenter and the teacher-subject. However, as we indicate below (see The Advantages and Disadvantages of the “Obedience” Metaphor), several papers in this volume emphasize other forms of social influence, including expert power and the norms of socially appropriate social interactions. The Initial Findings: Behavior und Emotion

In his first publication, Milgram reported what for many will always constitute the key “Milgram finding:” 65% of the participants obeyed the experimenter’s orders that they shock, in steadily increasing magnitude, a protesting victim to the point of maximum punishment. It was not that Milgram had actually solved a problem or confirmed a theory that made this research so provocative. Rather, his experiments raised extraordinarily vital and sobering questions. Why were subjects so obedient under circumstances that, on the surface, would not seem to warrant such influence? Why were the findings so unexpected? What did the surprisingly high rate of obedience in others tell us about ourselves, about our naive assumptions regarding human nature? Did Milgram actually isolate one of the crucial processes that, in a vastly larger and historically complex context, had made the genocide of the Holocaust possible? These are questions that were on everyone’s minds. Until Milgram, however, no one had had the required combination of personal motivation, intellectual discipline, technical ingenuity, and some would say, courage, to mount a major research effort to address them. Regardless of the actual findings, Milgram’s unprecedented contribution was in extending the analysis of obedience from that of speculation and philosophical analysis, i.e., talking or thinking about the issue, to that of controlled behavioral observations under systematically varied contexts. The importance of this simple fact, in terms of the sheer impact of these experiments upon generations of students, in our estimation cannot be overemphasized (see Miller, this issue). In addition to the unexpectedly high proportion of obedient subjects, another major finding was the intense stress experienced by many participants, graphically reported by Milgram: I observed a mature and initially poised businessman enter the laboratory smiling and confident. Within 20 minutes he was reduced to a twitching, stuttering wreck, who was rapidly approaching a point of nervous collapse. He constantly pulled on his earlobe, and twisted his hands. At one point he pushed his fist into his forehead and muttered: ‘Oh God, let’s stop it.’ And yet he continued to respond to every word of the experimenter, and obeyed to the end. (1963, p. 377)

This incongruence between emotion and behavior suggested that under social pressure, many individuals will engage in behaviors that produce considerable distress in others and in themselves; these are behaviors that they, in principle,

Perspectives on Obedience: Introduction

5

would consider themselves incapable of performing, and that, in fact, they would not perform without such influence. Milgram noted that “one might suppose that a subject would simply break off or continue as his conscience dictated. Yet, this is very far from what happened” (1963, p. 377).

Situational Influences on Obedience to Authority: The Power of the Situation

In a widely circulated film produced by Mitgram in 1965, a major segment is devoted to one participant who obeys all instructions to the 450 volt level. Although this individual hardly appears sadistic or hostile (he makes repeated efforts to disengage himself, only to return to the shock generator upon the experimenter’s prodding), it is virtually impossible not to think of this person’s actions as reflecting his character-his lack of resolve, his weakness. Why then do social psychologists assert that it is not the person but rather the “power ofthe situation” that is the major lesson of these experiments? The power of the situation is demonstrated in an extensive research program consisting of approximately 20 situational variations on the basic paradigm, with 20-40 participants in each. These are described in detail in Milgram’s text (1974), and some of them are reviewed below. Proximity and Orders to Stop Delivering Shocks

Experiments 1-4 varied the proximity of the subject ( i . e . , teacher) and learner. In Experiment 1, the learner was in an adjoining room. Vocal protests were introduced in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 placed the learner in the same room with the teacher. Experiment 4 involved the subject placing the learner’s hand on a shock plate to receive the punishment. Obedience decreased as the physical closeness of the teacher and learner increased, suggesting the crucial importance of empathic identification with the victim. The physical distance between the participant and experimenter was examined in Variation 7. The experimenter was not physically present in the laboratory but gave instructions by phone. Obedience was sharply reduced, to approximately one-third of the baseline level. The physical presence and surveillance of the authority were thus of vital significance in the observed obedience. Would subjects obey orders to stop shocking the learner‘? In Variation 12, Milgram devised a script in which the experimenter (at the 150 volt level) instructed subjects to discontinue shocking the learner. However, the learner insisted that he was strong enough to continue. Obedience, in this instance, consisted of “not shocking the learner,” and thus the findings clearly indicated that it was the authority who was obeyed, not the learner. Variation 14 required the experimenter to play the role of learner (the confederate assigned to the

6

Miller et al.

learner role expressed anxiety that the experimenter “relieved” by saying that he would assume the learner role initially himself). The subject was then ordered by the peer (confederate) to continue shocking the experimenter, but at the 150 volt level, the experimenter instructed the shocks to cease. All subjects immediately obeyed these instructions. Thus, the key issue being examined in this research is obedience to authority, not aggression. Subjects are as willing to obey an order to stop shocking as they are to continue. A control condition (Variation l l ) , in which subjects were simply asked to select their own shock levels without any directive from the experimenter, had also shown that subjects invariably chose the lowest shock levels. Conforming to Disobedient Peers

Asch (1956) had shown that the most powerful inhibitor of conformity was a situation in which subjects had an ally who defied the (otherwise) unanimous group. Milgram performed an analogous variation (17) in which four (apparent) subjects arrived for an experiment on the effects of “collective teaching and punishment” on memory and learning. Only one of the individuals was a true subject. A rigged draw produced the learner and three teachers. The script called for the other “subjects” (assistants) to withdraw at the tenth (150 volt) and fourteenth levels (210 volt), respectively. This defiance of authority was an extremely powerful influence on subjects, with only 10% continuing to follow instructions to the 450 volt level. Thus, when defiance was shown to be a concrete behavioral option resulting in no harmful consequences, the power of the authority and the credibility of the threatening prods (such as “you have no other choice”) were substantially diminished. Additional Factors Influencing Obedience

Obedience did not require that the study be conducted at a prestigious university (Yale). Relocating the investigation in an office building in Bridgeport, Connecticut (Variation lo), yielded only a marginally reduced obedience rate. Could an ordinary peer be as influential as the experimenter when placed in the role of authority? A scenario (Variation 13) was arranged in which the experimenter would be required to leave the laboratory momentarily, thereby creating a “need’ for one of the subjects to perform the authority role. Obedience dropped sharply, indicating that the power of authority rests not simply upon duties and actions but also upon one’s role status in an organization and mannerisms-the “style” of authority. The experimenter’s authority was challenged in one variation (9) by introducing a contractual agreement. The learner agreed to participate only if it was stipulated, in advance, that he would be released whenever he asked to do so.

Perspectives on Obedience: Introduction

7

However, when the learner later asked to be released, the experimenter ignored the agreement and continued issuing orders to the subject. Obedience was reduced to 40%, still a sizable degree of compliance under such conditions. The power of the authority was thus intact even under conditions that might reasonably be viewed as delegitimizing. How might an individual respond in this type of experiment if he or she was not instructed personally to shock the learner, but was assigned a subsidiary task (e.g., clerical recording) while another person was doing the actual lever pressing? When a peer (assistant) obeyed all orders, 37 of the 40 subjects in this variation (93%) remained in their role and took no action in terms of leaving the scene or rescuing the learner. In documenting the phenomenon of the “nonintervening bystander,” this particular experiment has been of particular interest to those who see important elements of the nature of “evil” in the obedience experiments. Milgram interpreted this important result in terms of responsibility: Any competent manager of a destructive bureaucratic system can arrange his personnel so that only the most callous and obtuse are directly involved in violence. The greater part of the personnel can consist of men and women who, by virtue of their distance from the actual acts of brutality, will feel little strain in their performance of supportive functions. They will feel doubly absolved from responsibility. First, legitimate authority ha5 given full warrant for their actions. Second, they have not themselves committed brutal physical acts. (1974, p. 122)

An important experiment by Kilham and Mann (1974) verified the importance of one’s exact location in a bureaucratic chain of command. Subjects acting as “transmitters”-relaying the orders of the experimenter-were significantly more obedient than subjects actually required to press the levers resulting in apparent pain in the learner.

Summary: The Power of the Situation The results of the complete set of experimental variations in Milgram’s research program are extremely compelling evidence demonstrating the power of the situation. In approximately half of the variations, the number of subjects proceeding to 450 volts is 50% or less. In other variations, a clear majority obey to 450 volts. For example, in Variation 18, virtually every subject was a willing bystander who refrained from leaving the experiment when another person was shocking the learner. It would be easy to explain such behavior as reflecting “callousness,” “indifference,” “uninvolvement,” “a lack of empathy,” etc. However, in Condition 17, almost every subject disobeyed the experimenter if one or two peers first provided a model for disobedience. Logically, of course, the same types of individuals were involved in both variations (an assumption of random assignment to experimental conditions). Yet obedience was virtually absent in one situation, and at the bystander level, virtually total in the other.

Miller et al.

8

Many readers have interpreted Milgram’s initial obedience report ( 1963) as suggesting that people are intrinsically subservient to the dictates of malevolent authority. However, this was not Milgram’s intended message. Rather, the primary conclusion is that most people have a surprisingly broad repertoire of potential responses to social influence. The option actually chosen-to yield or remain independent, to obey or to defy authority-is often a function of precise situational arrangements rather than intrinsic characterological traits of the person: The degree of obedience varied sharply depending upon the exact manner in which the variables of the experiment are arranged in an experimental condition. Yet, in the popular press, these variations are virtually ignored, or assumed to be of only minor importance. (1979, pp. 7-8, Preface to French edition of Obedience to Authority)

It should be noted, however, that in addition to the influence of the situation, Milgram was careful to note individual differences among his participants which occurred in almost every contextual variation (1974, chaps. 5 and 7). In the tabular presentations of his data, he emphasized “break off points,” indicating precisely how far individual subjects proceeded in the shock series. Although he was unable to account for such variation, he clearly left room and encouragement for further conceptual work on this issue (e.g., Blass, 1991; Kelman & Hamilton, 1989).

Milgram’s Theoretical Account Regardless of the specific situation, why didn’t people simply walk out of Milgram’s laboratory once they surmised what was developing in terms of their inner moral conflict? Milgram ( 1 974) identified critical factors that, in the aggregate, define a context that is conducive to obedience. Here we briefly review Milgram’s own theorizing. As we indicate below (The Advantages and Disadvantages of the “Obedience” Metaphor), some authors in the present volume present theoretical positions that supplement or supplant Milgram’s theoretical analysis. Overarching Ideology

According to Milgram, the socialization of obedience is of enormous significance. Put simply, from early childhood throughout our lives, we are taught to obey authority and are rewarded for doing so. Obedience becomes an unquestioned operative norm in countless institutions and settings, many of which are endowed with very high cultural status (what Milgram termed “overarching ideology”)-e.g., the military, medicine, the law, religion, education, the corporate-industrial world. Successful outcomes in countless circumstances often reflect productive obedience to authority, whether it be a person’s grades, health, promotions, medals, military victory, athletic performance, or recognition. We

Perspectives on Obedience: Introduction

9

learn to value obedience, even if what ensues in its name is unpleasant. We also trust the legitimacy of the many authorities in our lives, even if abuses of this trust occasionally occur, for example in the domains of politics, corporate financial institutions, or child-care services. In this context, people become vulnerable to the dictates of illegitimate authority because they are habituated to presume legitimacy and are unpracticed in the act of defying authority when this is the appropriate response. Also reflecting the socialization of obedience is our expectarion that someone will be in charge in whatever setting we encounter. Milgram’s participants anticipated that the project would be directed by a knowledgeable authority in the person of a research psychologist. In the mind-set of research subjects, therefore, obedience was set into motion long before they actually arrived, before the experimenter’s orders were issued and the learner was crying out in pain. A major lesson of social psychology is the power of preconceptions to influence perception and behavior so as to confirm those prior beliefs (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). Thus, contributing to the strain involved in Milgram’s laboratory was the simple fact that people never expected to face the prospect of defying the experimenter. Binding Factors

Once in the process of obeying an authority, it may be extremely difficult to extricate one’s self from that situation. These difficulties may be largely selfgenerated. not a necessary reflection of the authority’s use of coercion or threat. An important factor is the individual’s prior commitment to the authority. The subject, having volunteered to participate, is ‘‘locked’’ into what will transpire: The subject fears that if he breaks off, he will appear arrogant, untoward, and rude. Such emotions. although they appear small in scope alongside the violence being done to the learner, nonetheless help bind the subject into obedience . . . The entire prospect of turning against the experimental authority, with its attendant disruption of a well-defined social situation, is an embarrassment that many people are unable to face up to. ( 1974, pp. 150-151)

Why should anyone be concerned about being “impolite” to a brutal researcher? Such preoccupations, on the surface, would seem absurd. However, in the actual context of the situation, these concerns are influential. They bind the individual into the hierarchical structure of the relationship with authority. Thus, in addition to the explicit orders from the authority, there are subtle, self-imposed elements in many obedience situations that exert a pressure to remain in extraordinarily unpleasant situations. The Psychology of Escalation and Entrapment

In the obedience experiment, the individual is never ordered to inflict, at the start, severe punishment. The question, rather, is the degree to which a person

Miller et al.

10

will gradually escalate the level of inflicted punishment under orders. Although Modigliani and Rochat (this issue) quote Milgram to the effect that his subjects were thrown into a swift moving stream with its own momentum, Milgram did not give great emphasis to the temporal, incrementally developing aspect of his experiments. Research on a phenomenon known as “the foot in the door effect” (Freedman & Fraser, 1966)indicates that once an individual agrees to a relatively trivial request, he or she is far more likely to agree to a much more demanding request at a later time. As a result of the initial small-scaled behavior, a change in selfperception occurs that facilitates subsequent compliance with the larger, more demanding request. Such action then is consistent with the individual’s selfperception as “the kind of person who agrees to do such things.” The “gradualness” factor is relevant to the generalizations that have been made from Milgram’s findings to other contexts where the implications of engaging in immoral actions under authority are not realized at the start, but materialize after an individual becomes enmeshed in a bureaucratic chain of command (Darley, 1992; Gilbert, 198 1). One reason why people underestimate the observed results in the obedience research is that they fail to appreciate the powerful but subtle self-perception changes that occur over the course of the experiment. (See Miller, 1986, chap. 8, for an extended critical review of Milgram’s theoretical model).

The Ethical and Methodological Controversies Milgram’s initial (1963) report also was the catalyst for two controversies, one ethical, the other methodological, that were to become inextricably associated with the obedience studies. Shortly following the initial obedience report, Diana Baumrind published an essay in the American Psychologist (1964) attacking the ethics of Milgram’s treatment of his research subjects as well as the implications and value of the investigation. A rebuttal by Milgram (1964) appeared five months later. Their exchange was the impetus for a renaissance of sensitivity to ethical issues in human experimentation. The scholarship in this area is now voluminous. Although in many respects a highly unique form of psychological research, the obedience experiments have been routinely featured, for over 30 years, in any serious discussion of ethical issues in research with human subjects. With respect to Milgram’s specific procedure, subjects were informed in a postexperimental interview of the deceptions involved and were introduced to the “learner” in a spirit of “friendly reconciliation.” Milgram actually went beyond the usual debriefing procedure, mailing to each subject a thorough account of the basic research project (see Elms, this issue). Although there is no documented evidence that any of his subjects experienced lasting psychological harm, Mil-

Perspectives on Obedience: Introduction

11

gram clearly approached the limits (and in the view of some, exceeded the limits) in terms of ethical guidelines in human research, specifically in terms of respecting the participant’s right to withdraw. He blatantly challenged this right, particularly in the use of increasingly constraining “prods” for those subjects hesitating to continue administering punishment. What he learned in so doing has been of inestimable value in the eyes of countless scholars and social scientists. Whether or not he was ethical will depend, at least in part, on one’s position regarding the cost/benefit analysis of the research (see Miller, 1986, chap. 5 , for an extended discussion of the ethical controversy). A comment is in order regarding conceptual replications of the Milgram paradigm. In absolute terms, the number of obedience experiments, performed by other investigators using Milgram’s paradigm, is certainly low. One can contrast the obedience studies with two other classic research programs in social psychology, namely the Asch conformity paradigm and the Darley and LatanC studies on bystander intervention. As with the obedience studies, both the Asch and the Darley and Latane methodologies involved a considerable use of deception and produced strong conflict and emotion in many of their participants. Yet, unlike the Milgram studies, these paradigms were to stimulate numerous subsequent investigations. Given the extraordinary popularity and unwavering interest in the obedience studies, it is ironic that they have not generated a correspondingly large empirical literature. While the precise reasons for this circumstance remain unclear, it is virtually certain that the ethical features of Milgram’s paradigm have been viewed as uniquely problematic. Given the intense ethical criticism that was to surround the obedience research, essentially on the grounds that Milgram’s subjects were exposed to unacceptably high levels of stress, it was paradoxical that a methodological challenge also appeared shortly after the initial publication. Orne and Holland (1968) claimed that a majority of Milgram’s subjects had operated on the overriding assumption that no serious harm or injury could be inflicted upon another person in the context of a laboratory experiment. In Orne and Holland’s view, there were a number of cues-“demand characteristics of the experiment”suggesting to subjects that no one in fact was being harmed, e.g., the experimenter’s impervious manner in light of the learner’s cries of pain. According to Orne and Holland, a variety of factors were likely to have influenced Milgram’s subjects to behave, both in terms of administering “punishment” and expressing anxiety, but the heart of their claim was that Milgram had not in fact demonstrated destructive obedience to malevolent authoriiy. A considerable literature also was to develop on this methodological controversy (Miller, 1986, chap. 6). A variety of studies conducted with diverse subjects (e.g., children-Shanab & Yahya, 1977), and targets of punishment (e.g., puppies-Sheridan & King, 1972), in nonlaboratory settings (e.g., hospitalHofling, Brotzman, Dalrymple, Graves, & Pierce, 1966) and in different coun-

Miller et al.

12

tries (e.g., Australia-Kilham & Mann, 1974; Netherlands-Meeus & Raaijmakers, this issue), all demonstrated strong obedience effects and would seem to favor clearly Milgram’s position (Miller, 1986, chaps. 4 and 6). In addition to encouraging needed conceptual replications, the value of the methodological debate was to remind us of the extraordinary difficulties involved in pursuing rigorous empirical inquiry on the problem of destructive obedience.

Moving On: The Papers in This Volume Given the unprecedented impact of Milgram’s pioneering investigation and the crucial role that acts of destructive obedience continue to play in events, both in large-scale world crises and in the smaller contexts of our individual lives, we felt it appropriate to examine the nature of current research and thinking on the issue of destructive obedience. What have we learned (and what are we learning) about destructive obedience? What kinds of questions are being asked? What methodological innovations are being used to answer them? In a fundamental sense, we are focusing upon the history of Milgram’s obedience paradigm. By “history,” we mean, specifically, the moving record of accumulated data and thought that have been, and continue to be, inspired by Milgram’s landmark experiments. What, then, are the themes that work their way through the present volume? Methodological Diversiry

One theme is the wide methodological diversity that is brought to bear on the issues implicit in Milgram’s experimental paradigm. Several papers in this issue represent a successful quest for multiple methodologies that yield important insights. As Donald Campbell frequently observes, a range of diverse methodologies that triangulate on the same conceptual issues is a vital criterion of scientific inquiry (e.g., Brewer & Collins, 1981; Campbell & Fiske, 1959). This methodological diversity is particularly of value in light of the methodological and ethical issues that have often dominated the scientific and lay discourse stimulated by Milgram’s paradigm. As will be shown, these concerns about the original paradigm do nor, of course, prevent one from exploring the theoretical and empirical issues that originally challenged Milgram as well as new issues generated in response to Milgram’s seminal work. One paper in the present issue (Meeus and Raaijmakers) reports data obtained by using a close approximation to Milgram’s classic laboratory paradigm. That study, consisting of a series of 19 conceptual replications and extensions, focuses upon what they term “administrative obedience” in which subjects are instructed to harass a job applicant taking a crucial selection test. Thus, while the basic structure of Milgram’s paradigm is retained, the specific operationalization

Perspectives on Obedience: Introduction

13

of destructive obedience is very different. This research, conducted in the Netherlands, has both methodological as well as conceptual relevance to Milgram’s original data, and represents, in its scope, the most systematic research program on obedience since Milgram’s own work. Other papers also present diverse methodologies. Collins and D. Brief, Hamilton and Sanders, and A. Brief et al. present vignettes to subjects who then respond to systematically varied descriptions of a target person in an obedience situation. Collins and Brief use a videotaped reenactment of Milgram’s experimenter-teacher-learner interaction. Hamilton and Sanders use vignettes that depict corporate misdeeds. To study compliance with organizational requests for racial bias, A. Brief et al. use a vignette describing job applicants. Though very different from the Milgram paradigm, the procedures of these studies are also to be distinguished from role-playing methodologies in which subjects predict how they would perform or how others will perform. Subjects are asked to indicate their real opinions and interpretations of the people and settings described in the vignettes. Modigliani and Rochat analyze accounts of experimenter-teacher interactions available in the Milgram archive. Rochat and Modigliani also delve into historical archives for insight into the resistance to authority displayed by the people of Le Chambon during the German control of France in the early 1940s. Darley provides another methodological improvisation; his dependent variable consists of the intensity settings that subject-teachers make on a machine that they will (presumably) use to deliver noxious blasts of noise to the learner.

Defining Obedience Although Milgram discussed many causal forces acting on the individual in his paradigm, his formal definition of obedience focused on any compliant act by a subordinate in response to a request of any person at a higher level in an organizational hierarchy (see Milgram’s formal definition of obedience, quoted below). Following Milgram, many investigators and commentators take the position that whenever the principal and agent are in a superior/subordinate relationship in a social hierarchy, any act of compliance with a superior’s request can be labeled “obedience.” A commonly drawn (but not necessary) corollary of this position is that such obedience is produced by a unitary micromechanism of social influence. Consider, as one illustration, Milgram’s concept of the agentic state, in which subordinates are described as relinquishing a sense of personal responsibility for their action to a superior. Given the central role of this construct in his model, one might infer that the agentic shift is essential to all acts of obedience, i.e., consistent with the idea of “obedience as a unitary phenomenon.” The empirical evidence supporting the agentic shift, in fact, is weak (Mantel1 & Panzarella, 1976; Miller, 1986, chap. 8).

Miller et al.

14

Raven’s (French & Raven, 1959; Raven, 1965, 1993) treatment of legitimate power differs in some important respects from Milgram’s analysis of obedience. According to Raven (1992, p. 220), implicitly or explicitly, the legitimate authority states: “I have a right to ask you to do this and you have an obligation to comply.” Thus such terms as “obliged” or “obligated,” “should,” “ought to,” “required to” may signal the use of legitimate power. Legitimate power is most obvious when it is based on some formal structure-a supervisor or higher ranking military officer influencing a subordinate.

Raven describes other social norms that may mandate an obligation to complysuch as norms of reciprocity (“1 did that for you, so you should feel obligated to do this for me”) and equity (“1 have worked hard and suffered, so I have a right to ask you to do something to make up for it”). Thus Raven focuses on duty and obligation while Milgram either took no theoretical position early on (see Elms, this issue), commented on eclectic forces at work in the paradigm, or focused on the subordinate’s allocation of responsibility to the authority when in an agentic state (1974). Raven speculates that legitimate influence rests on social norms specifying obligations of the teacher to the experimenter. Thus, questions about duty and obligation (not responsibility for consequences) would tap this influence mechanism, and, according to Raven, not all of these norms stem from relative positions in a social hierarchy. Consistent with this conclusion, and in commenting on Staub’s (1989) analysis, Miller (this issue) agrees that “obedience is not a monolithic conceptual entity.” Diversity in Conceptual Issues and Explanations

Milgram’s findings, and his interpretations of them, do not necessarily speak for themselves. Their meaning resides, in an important sense, in how they are construed (Miller, this issue). Particular features can be selected or emphasized and provide the impetus for a variety of conceptual analyses. The papers in this volume are thus diverse in their conceptual focus. Relying extensively on his personal interactions and correspondence with Milgram, Alan Elms asserts that “Milgram was not seeking to develop a grand theory of obedience,” and he quotes Milgram’s straightforward, descriptive, atheoretical definition of obedience (e.g., “If Y follows the command of X we shall say that he has obeyed X ; if he fails to carry out the command of X , we shall say that he has disobeyed X”; Milgram, 1965, p. 58). In contrast, Lutsky focuses on Milgram’s later (1974) derivation of the agentic state as the centerpiece of his relatively elaborate model, in which the agent complies with the authority’s request out of a sense of duty and a transferring of responsibility to the authority. In a third take on Milgram’s analyses, Modigliani and Rochat focus on other, less formal, observations that fall outside of the agentic-state metaphor. For example, they note a relatively early ( 1965) analogy in which Milgram compared the laboratory setting to throw-

Perspectives on Obedience: Introduction

15

ing the subjects into a “swift flowing stream;” and they quote Milgram’s saying: “Upon entering the laboratory the individual becomes integrated into a situation that carries its own momentum” (1965, p. 72). These portions of Milgram’s writings support Modigliani and Rochat’s analysis, which focuses on the dynamically evolving features of the experimenter-teacher encounter itself, features that “can enhance, impede, or divert the flow that threatens to sweep subjects inexorably toward obedience.” Empirical Arena f o r Developing and Testing Theories of Social Interuction

For a number of reasons, including Milgram’s own substantive focus, as well as the ethical concerns involved in literal replications of the original laboratory procedure, few researchers have turned to the obedience paradigm as an empirical setting within which general theories of social interaction can be honed. Several articles in the present issue, however, represent departures from this state of affairs. Modigliani and Rochat, for instance, begin with a general critique of the pervasive person-situation taxonomy of causal forces driving social interactions. They then use the Milgram paradigm to illustrate how different sequences of interaction (between experimenter and teacher) mediate the link between situation and obedience or defiance. They predict-and observe-that the earlier in the sequence of experimenter-teacher interactions the participants begin to resist (by posing questions and objections), the more likely they are to disobey. Their analysis supports the more general theoretical position that social interactions cannot be completely traced to fixed inputs from person, situation, and person-situation interactions. Collins and D. Brief propose that behaviors have symbolic meanings. They then turn to obedience and disobedience in the classic Milgram paradigm as an empirical context in which to illustrate the symbolic meanings of these socially significant, familiar behaviors. Their results tell us something about strategies for defiance, but they also illustrate the more general assertion that behaviors have symbolic meanings. In his effort to develop a general taxonomy of principal-agent relationships, Darley uses the Milgram experiment as an example of one (ecologically atypical, he argues) of the four cells in his 2 x 2 taxonomy. Darley’s analysis adds to our understanding of the Milgram paradigm, but his primary focus is in formulating a broader theory of principal-agent interactions. Several papers also incorporate diverse intellectual traditions that are relevant to destructive obedience. A . Brief et al. frame their study in terms of organizational theory. Darley draws heavily from legal theory about principals and their agents. Drawing from social cognition, Collins and D. Brief suggest that some of the interpretations of participants in the Milgram scenario are generated by unconscious, automatic information processing. As noted earlier, the historical context of destructive obedience was of vital significance to Mil-

16

Miller et al.

gram. Three of the papers in this issue (Miller, Lutsky, and Rochat and Modigliani) address different elements of the historical perspective. Defiance

At first glance, of course, one reflexively thinks of Milgram as obviously preoccupied with destructive obedience. From a different perspective, however, his contributions can also be viewed as dealing with problems of dissent. As noted earlier, in a number of his experimental variations, dissent was clearly the modal response. In this context, several articles in this issue focus on defiance. Darley, for example, identifies what he terms constructive obedience in which the subject implements goals set by the authority but not in terms of the means and actions specified by the authority. It is important to note that Milgram’s subjects were forced, by the design of the study, to invent their own means of defiance. It was, in essence, “messy,” with each reservation of the subject met by an insistent researcher who, in his scripted role as a stoic, resolute scientist, never acknowledged the merit of the subject’s compassion for the learner. In this context, Ross and Nisbett (1991) have noted a basic finding in social psychology, namely that people will often, for a variety of reasons, fail to behave in a manner consistent with their personal attitudes unless there are “channel factors” that facilitate correspondent action. Witnessing successful defiance on the part of a peer in Variation 17 illustrates one such channel factor, and disobedience was virtually total in this condition. This focus on defiance (in contrast to obedience) is also represented in both of the Modigliani and Rochat papers, which analyze the interaction sequences that presage defiance, and in Collins and D. Brief, who compare different styles of defiance. The Advantages and Disadvantages of the “Obedience” Metaphor

Another conceptual question revolves around advantages and disadvantages of the term “obedience” to describe both laboratory and naturalistic occurrences of evil-doing. In the preceding section, we pointed to a variety of new and elaborated theoretical explanations for the high rates of compliance in the classic paradigm. Several authors in this issue offer an even more fundamental challenge to Milgram’s conceptualization, and analyze the usefulness of the “obedience” label itself. This is the central thesis of Lutsky’s article, in which he distinguishes obedience as a description of the teacher’s behavior from obedience as a theoretical explanation for that behavior. Lutsky also focuses on how subjects are constrained by the norms and emergent dynamics of social interaction (many of which are unrelated to the superior/subordinate role relationship) as a causal force on the teacher’s behavior. Collins and D. Brief note that many of the norms

Perspectives on Obedience: Introduction

17

of appropriate social interaction that restrain the teacher from discontinuing the shocks would apply whether or not the two interactants were in a superiorsubordinate relationship. Miller notes that Staub (1989) discusses a variety of important social-psychological processes that function, in addition to obedience to authority, as determinants of genocide and other politically sanctioned massacres. These include the initial feelings of hostility driven by perceived threats or difficult life circumslances, the devaluation of outgroups, the entrapment involved in a gradual progression of increasingly dehumanizing actions, and the role of bystanders-their actions or, more significantly, their non actions.

Staub is quoted (by Miller and by Lutsky) to indicate that the focus on obedience may have slowed the analysis of genocide-presumably by obscuring other causal determinants of evil. Others have objected to the obedience focus because it serves to excuse the destructively obedient individual from blame. Lutsky contrasts the intentionalist (obedience) explanation of the Holocaust with functional explanations, which “see the Holocaust as evolving from bureaucratic developments and rivalries, improvisation, individual and group initiatives, and other external conditions and forces.” We would agree that the pendulum may have swung too far in the direction of explaining socially sanctioned evil solely as a consequence of obedience to authority. However, as Miller (this issue) indicates, Milgram’s work is the primary reason that we consider ordinary psychological processes as sources of eviland that we are “intellectually comfortable” in presuming that this is a viable perspective to pursue. Further, we agree with Elms that Milgram probably would not have been disappointed if his data remained figural while theoretical explanations evolved across time. He indicated to one of us (AM) that his greatest frustration was that the controversies associated with the obedience studies had diverted attention from his original and lasting concern, the nature of obedience to authority. It is our hope that the ideas considered in this issue will serve as a catalyst for further discussion and research on the substantive features of destructive obedience. Organization of the Papers

We have divided the papers in this issue into two sections. The first, “The Obedience Paradigm: Origins, Historical Contexts, and Contemporary Views on its Meaning,” contains papers by Elms, Miller, Lutsky, Hamilton and Sanders, and Collins and Brief. The second section, “Analyzing Obedient and Disobedient Behavior,” contains papers by Modigliani and Rochat, Darley, Meeus and Raaijmakers, A . Brief et al., and Rochat and Modigliani.

Miller et al.

18

References Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psvchological Monographs. 70(No. 9). Baumrind, D. (1964). Some thoughts on the ethics of research: After reading Milgram’s “Behavioral study of obedience.” American Psychologist, 19, 42 1-423. Baumrind, D. ( 1985). Research using intentional deception: Ethical issues revisited. American Psychologist. 40, 165- 174. Blass, T. (1991). Understanding behavior in the Milgram obedience experiment: The role of personality, situations, and their interactions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 398-41 3. Brewer, M. B., & Collins, B. E. (1981). Perspectives in knowing: Six themes from Donald T. Campbell. In M. B. Brewer & B. E. Collins (Eds.), Scientific inquiryand the socialsciences: A volume in honor of Donald T. Campbell (pp. 1-9). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Brown, R. (1985). Social psychology (2nd ed.). New York: Free Press. Campbell, D. T.,& Fiske, D. W. (1959). Convergent and discriminant validation by the multitraitmultimethod matrix. Psychological Bulletin, 56, 8 I - 105. Darley. J. M. (1992). Social organization for the production of evil. Psychological Inquiry. 3, 199218. Fiske, S . T., & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social cognition (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Freedman, J. L., & Fraser, S. C. (1966). Compliance without pressure: The foot-in-the-door technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 4. 195-202. French, J. R. F., & Raven, B. H. (1959). The bases of power. In D. Cartwtight (Ed.), Studies in social power (pp. 118-149). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Gilbert, S. J. (1981). Another look at the Milgram obedience studies: The role of the gradated series of shocks. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 7. 690-695, Hofling, C. K., Brotzman, E., Dalrymple, S., Graves, N . , & Pierce, C. (1966). An experimental study of nurse-physician relations. Journal of Nerwus and Mental Disease, 143, 171180. Kelman, H. C., & Hamilton, V. L. (1989). Crimes of obedience: Toward a social psychology of authority and responsibility. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Kilham, W., & Mann, L. (1974). Level of destructive obedience as a function of transmitter and executant roles in the Milgram obedience paradigm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 29. 696-702. Mantell, D. M., & Panzarella, R. (1976). Obedience and responsibility. British Journal c.fSocialand Clinical Psychology, 15, 239-245. Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67. 37 1-378. Milgram, S . (1964). Issues in the study of obedience: A reply to Baumrind. American Psychologist, 19. 848-852. Milgram, S . ( 1965). Some conditions of obedience and disobedience to authority. Human Relations. 18, 57-75. Milgram, S . (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. New York: Harper & Row. Milgram, S . (1979). Priface a la deuxieme edition francaise [Preface to the second French edition]. Soumission a l’autoriti: (In point de vue expirimental. Paris: Calmann-Levy. Miller, A. G. ( 1986). The obedience experiments: A case study of controversy in social science. New York: Praeger. Orne, M. T., & Holland, C. H. (1968). On the ecological validity of laboratory deceptions. International Journal of Psychiatry 6 , 282-293. Raven, B. H. (1965). Social influence and power. In 1. D. Steiner & M. Fishbein (Eds.), Current studies in social psychology (pp. 371-381). New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Raven, B. H. (1992). A powerlinteraction model of interpersonal influence: French and Raven thirty years later. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 7, 217-244. Raven, B. H. (1993). The bases of power: Origins and recent developments. Journal ofSocialIssues. 49(4), 227-25 I .

Perspectives on Obedience: Introduction

19

Ross, L. D., & Nisbett, R. E. (1991). Theperson and the situation: Perspectives of socialpsychology. New York: McGraw-Hill. Shanab, M. E., & Yahya, K. A. (1977). A behavioral study of obedience in children. Journal of Personaliry and Social Psychology, 35. 530-536. Sheridan, C . L., & King, R. G. (1972). Obedience to authority with an authentic victim. Proceedings of the American Psychological Association. 2 , 165- 166. Staub, E. (1989). The roots of evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence. New York: Cambridge University Press.

ARTHUR G. MILLER is a professor of psychology at Miami University. He received his Ph.D. in personality-social psychology from Indiana University in 1967. His research interests have centered on biases in causal attribution, the effects of preconceptions on social judgment, factors that influence the processing of health information, and stereotyping. He has edited In the Eye of the Beholder: Contemporary Issues in Stereotyping. He has also had a continuing interest in the substantive, methodological, and ethical implications of Milgram’s experiments on obedience to authority. His major publications on the Milgram studies include an edited volume, The Social Psychology of Psychological Research, and The Obedience Experiments: A Case Study of Controversy in Social Science. BARRY E. COLLINS was a student of Donald Campbell’s. He received his Ph.D. in social psychology in 1963 and was an assistant professor at Yale University. Since 1966, he has been at the University of California, Los Angeles. His books include Social Psychology, Social Psychology of Group Processes for Decision Making (co-authored with Harold Guetzkow), and Attitude Change: A Critical Analysis of Theoretical Approaches (co-authored with Chuck Kiesler and Norman Miller). In 1971, he served as editor for a special nonthematically organized issue of JSI. Most recently, he has been interested in self and socialidentity images as causes of behavior and in the application of these images to an understanding of obedience and AIDS-related behaviors. DIANA E. BRIEF received her M.A. in psychology in 1992 and is currently a doctoral student in measurement and psychometrics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her publications include “A Profile of Personality for a Russian Sample: As Indicated by the Comrey Personality Scales” and “The Comrey Personality Scales in Russian: A Study of Concurrent, Predictive, and External Validity.” She has presented several papers that concern observers’ reactions to destructive obedience and has contributed, through her participation in the 1992 Conference on Psychology in the C.I.S., to the making of government policies regarding the conduct of American-Russian cross-national research.