During the Vietnam War, as during any war, many acts of brutality were committed by soldiers on both sides; and most people seem to realize this. Nevertheless, one particularly horrifying incident appalled people around the world. On March 16th, 1968, American soldiers killed hundreds of people living in a village called My Lai. According to Paul Meadlo, a soldier who participated in the shootings, the leader of the operation, Lieutenant William Calley, ordered his men to shoot everyone in the village:

Question: He told this to all of you, or to you particularly?
Answer: Well, I was facing him. So, but the other three, four guys heard it and so he [Calley] stepped back about ten, fifteen feet, and he started shooting them. And he told me to start shooting. So I started shooting, I poured about four clips into the group....
Question: And you killed how many? At that time?
Answer: Well, I fired them automatic, so you can’t — You just spray the area on them and so you can’t know how many you killed ‘cause they were going fast. So I might have killed ten or fifteen of them.
Question: Men, women, and children?
Answer: Men, women, and children.
Question: And babies?
Answer: And babies....
Question: Now, you’re rounding up more?
Answer: We’re rounding up more, and we had about seven or eight people. And we was going to throw them in the hootch, and well, we put them in the hootch and then we dropped a hand grenade down there with them. And somebody holed up in the ravine, and told us to bring them over to the ravine.... [T]hey had about seventy, seventy-five people all gathered up. So we threw ours in with them and Lieutenant Calley told me, he said, “Soldier, we got another job to do.” And so he walked over to the people, and he started pushing them off and started shooting.... And so we started pushing them off, and we started shooting them, so all together we just pushed them all off, and just started using automatics on them....
(New York Times, November 25, 1969; transcript of CBS Network Radio interview of Paul Meadlo by Mike Wallace, November 24, 1969)

The matter-of-fact manner in which this man related the horrifying incidents of that day seems unnatural. Was he a sadistic psychopath who enjoyed murdering defenseless people — from babies held by their mothers to elderly women and men? Some people might answer “yes.” Other people probably would note that being a soldier in a war-related situation causes a person to act differently than he or she might have in most other situations. Regardless of the preferred explanation, however, probably most people would assign responsibility for this man’s actions to him: he consciously and deliberately chose to kill those people on that day. Some people might even argue that he could have tried to stop the other soldiers from shooting the villagers.

But consider the fact that a large group of soldiers took part in the killings. Not one of them refused (at least not overtly[∂]) to take part in the killings. Not one said that the killings were wrong and that they should stop. Could they all have been psychopaths? When the man was asked why he took part in the killings, he answered that he was following orders and that, for various reasons, it had seemed like “the right thing to do” at the time. His words suggested that he placed most of the responsibility for the killings on Lieutenant Calley: he felt that, when Calley ordered the massacre, he had no choice but to pull the trigger. Furthermore, he explanation implied that virtually anyone, if put in the same situation, would have done the same thing. As you will learn in this section, there are very good reasons to think that he probably was correct: it seems likely that most of us, if we were trained soldiers placed in a similar situation, would have acted in a similar manner.

The psychological field[∂] that studies the influence of situational factors on our cognitions, emotions, and behaviors is called social psychology. Social psychologists assume that much of what we do is determined by the presence of others, whether this presence is actual (for example, people are in the room with you), implied (for example, a store's video camera is pointed at you), or only imagined (for example, you think of your mother just before you do something that she probably wouldn't like). Do social situations determine our behavior and mental events in everyday life? It should be obvious to you that they often have an important influence. For example, people act differently at a funeral than they do at a wedding reception. Why do they act differently? One reason is that certain behaviors considered acceptable at wedding receptions would be highly inappropriate at a funeral.

Perhaps most important, the social context gives us information about the social role we are to assume in the situation. For example, the social context of a college classroom involves the assuming of social roles that affect the behaviors, thoughts, and emotions of those taking part. Those who are assigned role of student tend to be quiet, to raise their hands to get permission to speak, to enter at an assigned time, and to leave when they are dismissed. Those who are assigned the role of teacher tend to talk often, to talk without waiting for the permission of others, and to begin and end class when they desire. Of course, there are differences among individuals regarding the particular behaviors exhibited within these roles; but the general outlines of how people are to act are determined by the social context. Other important factors within the social context of a college classroom are things such as how the seats are arranged (you will talk more, on average, when the seats are arranged in a circle), whether or not others are watching you, and the particular activities in which the class is engaged (for example, you behave differently during a test than you do when giving an oral report).

The field of social psychology is complementary[∂] to the field called personality psychology (see Section 1), which focuses on the study of psychological factors that affect the cognitions, emotions, and behaviors of individuals. Whereas personality psychologists attempt to discover which psychological factors (unconscious conflicts, learned habits, inherited traits, etc.) are most influential and how they have this influence, social psychologists attempt to discover which social factors (social roles, social status, etc.) are most influential and how they have this influence. Thus, personality psychologists adopt primarily an internal perspective: they assume that internal mental factors are the most important determinants of cognitions, emotions, and behavior. Social psychologists, on the other hand, adopt primarily an external perspective (just as did the behaviorists): they assume that external situational factors are the most important determinants of cognitions, emotions, and behavior.

This discussion suggests that the various theoretical approaches and fields of psychology (such as evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology, behavioral genetics, and experimental psychology) differ from each other with respect to the types of causal factors they study. Social psychologists focus on any causal factor in the immediate social situation that may cause differences in how people act, think, and feel. For example, Shaver (1987) illustrated with an everyday situation how the field of social psychology differs from that of experimental psychology (the field described in Section 3 that has included research on learning, sensation/perception, and, in the early days of psychology, the fundamental structures and functions of the conscious mind):

Consider ... the ways in which each [field]...might describe a family dinner. Depending on his or her specialty within the discipline, a general experimental psychologist might study the eye-hand coordination necessary to bring the food from the plate to the mouth, the subjective experiences corresponding to the taste and smell of the meal, or perhaps the learning processes involved in getting the children to eat their spinach.... The social psychologist, by contrast, might wonder whether the family would conduct itself the same way with invited guests present as it does when eating alone, [or] whether suggestions to the children have more impact when delivered with good food than when delivered at other times.... (p. 17)

This example should make clear that social psychologists focus on the direct causal effects of variables within the immediate social situation — variables such as the presence or absence of guests. In order to find out what it is about a particular social situation that influences the mental events and behaviors of individuals, social psychologists often experimentally manipulate situational factors.

Situational Factors Affecting Conformity

During the 1950’s, Solomon Asch (1907-1996) performed a series of experimental studies in which he examined the strong tendency of humans to conform to the views and judgements of others. When we conform, we act in ways that correspond to the opinions of a group, social customs, cultural traditions, etc. In short, we are motivated to express behaviors that agree or correspond with those expressed by others. In order to study conformity in a controlled research situation, Asch used a visual-perception in which participants were asked to judge which of three "comparison lines" was the same length as that of a “reference line.” An example of this task is shown in Figure 1. The reference line is in the box on the left-hand side, and the comparison lines are in the box on the right-hand side. It should be obvious that Line C is identical in length to the reference line; and one would predict that participants should have no difficulty with the task. Participants were presented with a series of such comparisons, and a total score was calculated for each participant by adding together responses to each comparison.

Figure 1. An Example of the Visual-Perception Task Used In the
Conformity Studies of Solomon Asch. The Reference

Let’s suppose, that you were a participant in one of Asch's studies, and that you were sitting with four other participants, each of whom chose Line A before your turn came. Given that Line C is obviously the correct choice, what might you think as each stranger chose Line A? You might think that something was wrong with their eyes or, perhaps, with yours. You probably would look very closely at the lines as each person responded incorrectly in an attempt to figure out what was wrong. When your turn finally came, what would you say? Right now, you probably are quite certain that you would choose Line C regardless of what the others had said. Nevertheless, about 75% of people chose the same incorrect line as did the others in at least some of the comparisons in the series. They did this even though they knew that they were making an incorrect choice. Only about 25% of the participants never conformed to the others' incorrect choices.

In reality, only one participant in the experiment was the person whose conformity was being measured. The other group members were confederates — people who only pretended to be participants. On some trials, they were told beforehand to choose the correct line and, on other trials, they were told to choose one of the incorrect lines. The real participant, however, did not know that the others were only pretending. In this way, Asch (1951, 1955, and 1956) could vary several situational factors in order to determine which ones were most important for conformity. He found that three factors were especially important:

• The number of confederates in the group. When there were three or fewer confederates, the actual participant became much less likely to conform. And, as you might expect, they were least likely to conform when there was only one confederate. When the number of confederates reached four, participants were most likely to conform: increasing the number of confederates past four had virtually no effect on the amount of conformity. That is, whether there were four or ten confederates, participants conformed to about the same degree.
• The amount of dissent (disagreement) among confederates. If even one confederate chose a line that differed from the one chosen by the other confederates, even if that line also was incorrect, actual participants were much more likely to state their real opinion.
• The difficulty of the judgement. If the comparison lines were very similar in length both to each other and to the reference line, participants were more likely to conform with the incorrect judgements of the confederates. In this case, it seems, the participants were made more uncertain about their opinion when the confederates chose an incorrect line that was not so obviously incorrect as had been the case in some of the other comparisons.

Why did participants so often conform with the incorrect judgements of the confederates? It seems that, in general, people are motivated not to disagree — not to stick out as the only dissenter[∂] — with others in a group, especially when the others all agree. There are two likely reasons for this:

• We tend to perceive others to be reliable sources of information. Although we typically obtain accurate information about the world from our senses, we also obtain a great deal of accurate information from others. When the rest of a group agrees on something, even when it contradicts our own experiences or views, then we tend to assume that the group consensus is likely to be correct.
• People fear the negative reactions of others to disagreement. We are strongly motivated to establish and maintain strong connections to others. In order to be most successful in achieving this goal, we must be adept in generating in others positive feelings for us. We avoid any behaviors that potentially could generate in others negative feelings for us. When we disagree with others, others are more likely to develop negative feelings for us.

Most of the participants felt very strange, foolish, and/or fearful of others' reaction whenever they disagreed with the group consensus, which suggests that the second motive is a very powerful one. Furthermore, the fact that the confederates were strangers suggests that this motive affects our degree of conformity to an even greater extent with friends, family, and coworkers.

Asch's conformity studies illustrate a research design often is used by social psychologists. Two or more people take part in the study, but only one person is the actual participant, whereas the others are confederates. The confederates are the most important component of the research situation because they represent the social influence hypothesized to affect the participant's cognitions, emotions, and behavior. Participants are deceived about the role of the confederates as well as about the true purpose of the study: if they knew that it was a ruse[∂], then the researchers would be unable to test the relative importance of various situational factors.

Although there are some limitations to Asch’s conformity studies (see, for example, Bond & Smith, 1996), the general finding that humans tend to conform readily within particular social situations seems to be accurate. In fact, in your everyday life, you probably have observed that people generally avoid expressing opinions that differ too much from those around them, especially when they are uncertain of their opinions and others agree that a particular opinion is correct. Asch's discovery that his participants often conform to an obviously incorrect opinion seems to stretch this general rule to the breaking point. Although such an extreme situation may not often encountered in everyday life, Asch's resultss suggest that people will express opinions that they don't actually hold whenever they feel strong social pressures to do so.

As you continue to study social psychology, you probably will find many challenges to the fundamental belief common in our society that the primary causes of human behavior are internal to the self — including factors such as personality traits and consciously made judgements and decisions. Social psychology, probably more than any other field of psychology, contains discoveries and theories that often seem surprising or strange because they contradict our basic intuitions and deeply held beliefs about the typical causes of our cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. But this is precisely why social-psychological research is so valuable: it provides insights into human nature that we could not have obtained in any other way.

Study Questions

1. What is the major assumption of those working within the field of social psychology?
2. Do others need to be present in order for them to influence our behaviors, cognitions, and emotions? Why or why not?
3. How does personality psychology differ from social psychology?
4. How is personality psychology similar to social psychology?
5. In what way(s) does personality psychology complement social psychology?
6. What is conformity?
7. How did Solomon Asch study conformity?
8. Which situational factors had the largest influence on the degree to which participants conformed in Asch's experiments?
9. Why do individuals tend to avoid disagreeing with the judgements and opinions expressed by a group to which they belong?
10. Why did Asch make use of confederates and deception in his studies of conformity?

Situational Factors Affecting Task Performance

In Section 2, you learned about the phenomenon of social facilitation, which was defined as the faster (or better) performance of a task when others are present. As you may remember, social facilitation was first studied by Triplett (1898), who had observed that bicycle racers achieved faster times when racing with others than when racing alone. He asked the following research question: does the presence of others cause individuals to work faster? You may remember that, in order to answer this question, Triplett designed an experimental study in which children wound fishing line on a reel in one of two conditions: when alone or with other children present who also were engaged in the same task. As predicted, he found that children wound the fishing line more rapidly when other children were present. Triplett’s study showed that the presence of others changes the behavior of individuals.

Triplett’s study also showed the applied nature of modern-day social psychology: he had a “real-life” problem he was interested in understanding (racing speeds). In order to understand it better, he designed a laboratory situation related in an important way to the real-life problem, but which left out much of the complexity of real life. The ultimate goal of most research in social psychology is to take the knowledge we gain from such studies and apply it to the real-life situations that inspired the studies in the first place. As we will see later, important areas of research in this field usually have begun with a practical everyday problem that researchers wished to understand.

The causes of social facilitation were studied for many years after publication of Triplett’s study. It was discovered that social facilitation occurs only with relatively simple tasks. as a task becomes more difficult, social facilitation decreases; and eventually task performance becomes worse for individuals in the presence of others compared to lone individuals. Even more interesting, perhaps, was the discovery that social facilitation occurs in nonhuman animals, even in species with simple nervous systems, such as insects. For example, ants build nests faster in the presence of other ants, cockroaches run through mazes faster in the presence of other cockroaches, rats eat more in the presence of other rats (as do people in the presence of other people).

Have you figured out what could have caused better task performance with all these different tasks and all these different species? When social facilitation was described in the preceding paragraph, it may have occurred to you that the presence of others could make a person feel more competitive. In this case, people may work harder at a task because they want to perform better than others. But this theory seems less plausible when we realize that cockroaches and ants also show social facilitation. It does not seem likely that insects are motivated by feelings of competitiveness. We also would have the same difficulty with proposing that the fear of being evaluated by others (performance anxiety) is the cause: it does not seem likely that ants, rats, and cockroaches would feel performance anxiety. Don’t feel too bad if, at this point, you are not certain of an answer to the question about the cause(s) of social facilitation. In fact, research on the social-facilitation effect had almost disappeared by the second half of the 1930’s because researchers could not make much sense of the information they had collected.

During the 1960’s, however, a researcher by the name of Robert Zajonc (the last name rhymes with “science”) became interested in explaining the social-facilitation effect. He developed the following theory of social facilitation: individuals from many species become physiologically aroused when other members of the same species are present. In humans, for example, physiological arousal in the presence of other humans can be measured by increased heart rate, blood pressure, and sweating, as well as decreased salivation and digestion. Zajonc argued that certain responses are more easily elicited when an animal is physiologically aroused. He referred to these as “dominant” responses. For tasks that are simple because they have been well learned, the dominant response elicited by arousal is the one that has become habitual because of prior learning. On the other hand, for tasks that are difficult because they have not been well learned, the dominant response is unrelated to the one that would be correct for that task. Thus, Zajonc predicted that physiological arousal helps the animal to perform better when a task has been well learned, but causes the animal to perform worse when the task has not been well learned.

What implications would this explanation have for you when taking a test? Where should you take a test if you have studied hard and know the material very well? In this case, you should take it in the classroom with everyone else because the task should be relatively simple for you and the dominant responses should be the correct answers. The presence of others should cause increased physiological arousal and, thus, help you to perform better. Where should you take the test if you haven’t studied very much? In this case, you should be alone when taking the test because the task will be more unfamiliar to you and, therefore, your dominant responses are more likely to be incorrect answers. The presence of others should cause you to make incorrect responses. Are you going to follow this advice the next time you take a test? You shouldn’t do this until you have a better idea of whether or not this explanation is a good one. Remember, if you are trying to develop your skepticism and be empirical in your approach to questions, you need to examine observable evidence supporting the theory.

How would you determine if Zajonc’s theory of social facilitation is a good one? Does the presence of others cause physiological arousal that leads to the elicitation of dominant (well learned) responses? In order to answer this question, we would want to give subjects both familar tasks for which they have developed habitual responses and unfamiliar tasks; and then measure their performance on each type of task when alone and with others. Furthermore, Zajonc hypothesized that social facilitation is not caused by factors such as performance anxiety or feelings of competitiveness. Thus, when designing a study, we need to control for the effects of these two factors on performance. As this example demonstrates, it often is very difficult to design a study that can show precisely what researchers want it to show. Perhaps we could increase arousal by having others present who are not performing the task themselves (thereby eliminating competition as an explanation) and who are paying no attention to the subject performing the task (thereby eliminating performance anxiety). For example, we might have others sitting in the same room doing nothing while wearing a blindfold and listening to music on earphones. When studies such as these have been performed, it has been found that social facilitation still occurs. These findings the theory that physiological arousal caused by the presence of others explains social-facilitation effects.

Other researchers, however, have not been satisfied with Zajonc’s explanation of social facilitation. Is this because psychologists can never agree and, thus, that perhaps there is no basis for agreement? Is it really true that one person’s opinion about human behavior is as good as anyone else’s, regardless of the evidence? If the answers to any of these questions were “yes,” this would imply that psychology can never be a science. But the answers are all “no.” Disagreement over the meaning of evidence and its implications for a particular theory is not due to the supposed nonscientific nature of psychology. Psychology is a science, but it is a science that investigates some very complex phenomena: human behaviors, cognitions, and emotions. In order to study scientifically these complex phenomena, we need to reason carefully about alternative explanations and design research studies that adequately test these explanations. Only after a great deal of research and the demonstrated superiority of a particular theory can researchers begin to feel certain that the theory is more likely than the others to be a good one. Criticisms are merely skeptical thinking in action, not signs that agreement is impossible.

In trying to understand the criticisms of Zajonc’s theory of social facilitation, we must examine two possible problems with his research: (1) There may be alternative explanations that have not been considered. That is, one could argue that the experimental manipulations of Zajonc and others did not exclude other possible causes of their results. For example, it might be that, when in the presence of others, better performance on simple tasks and worse performance on difficult tasks are due simply to the fact that people distract us, thereby making it harder for us to think. It seems obvious that, if we are having difficulty thinking, we will perform more poorly on harder tasks that require more thought than on simpler tasks that do not. In this case, we would not have to claim that physiological arousal causes social facilitation at all (although it still may). In order to choose between arousal and distraction, we would have to perform further experiments — experiments that would allow us to exclude one of these explanations. In fact, most researchers of this problem now believe that distraction causes arousal, and that arousal is still the more direct cause of social facilitation. This brings us to the second problem with Zajonc’s theory.

(2) There are multiple causes of any phenomenon. That is, changes in a phenomenon can be the result of changes in any number of factors. No phenomenon has only one cause. Thus, even if physiological arousal due to the presence of others is an important cause of social facilitation, this does not mean that other factors cannot also be causes of the social-facilitation effect. For example, it seems reasonable to predict that competitive feelings and/or performance anxiety still might have effects on our performance even if we can rule them out in a particular experiment. What we are trying to do in an experiment is to show that a particular factor is an important one, but we are not dismissing the possible importance of other factors. For example, think of all of the factors thought to cause cancer. In any one experiment, we want to control for the effects of these other factors, not because we think they are unimportant, but precisely because we realize their possible importance and we don’t want them to interfere with identifying the causal effects of the factor we are studying. Thus, with respect to social facilitation, other factors also may be important and further studies are needed to demonstrate their influence.

Study Questions

11. How would you define "social facilitation" in your own words?
12. What is an example of social facilitation from your own life?
13. In what way is task difficulty linked to social facilitation?
14. What is a problem with the theory that social facilitation is caused by feelings of competitiveness when others are present?
15. What is a problem with the theory that social facilitation is caused by feelings of performance anxiety?
16. What was Zajonc's theory of social facilitation?
17. What are two general problems that should make us cautious about choosing one particular theory as explaining fully a phenomenon?

Situational Factors Affecting Obedience

About eight years before the My Lai killings, Stanley Milgram (1933-1984), a social psychologist at Yale University, began a series of studies that he hoped would help to explain how such atrocities could happen (Blass, 2004). In particular, he wanted to understand how people who generally were caring and empathic people could be induced to harm and even kill others. His interest was sparked by the actions of German officers and enlisted men during World War II, who murdered large numbers of people in often sadistic acts of extreme brutality — men who often appeared no different, on average, than anyone else. These men often justified their actions by stating that they were, “just following orders” (as did the American soldier in the interview presented at the beginning of this section). Nazi soldiers involved in the mass killings of unarmed and defenseless civilians men, women, and children, stated that, although they had found their own actions to be personally repulsive, they felt as if they had had no other choice. Is it true that typically nonviolent people will perform violent acts simply because an authority has told them to do so? That is, is it true that, under the right circumstances, personality may have little to do with cruel and sadistic actions — that evil can be in the situation and not in the person? In 1960, Milgram began a study designed to answer such questions. In order to study this problem, he used the following general procedure: “A person comes to a psychological laboratory and is told to carry out a series of acts that come increasingly into conflict with conscience. The main question is how far the participant will comply with the experimenter’s instructions before refusing to carry out the actions required of him” (Milgram, 1974, p. 3).

In order to answer this research question, Milgram (1963) set up the following research situation, which will here be called the “standard condition” (also see description in Elms, 1998a). Two people were brought to Milgram's laboratory at Yale University and informed by a man called the Experimenter that the purpose of the experiment in which they were about to participate was to investigate the effects of punishment on memory. One participant was to be the Learner: his task was to memorize a list of paired words (see below). The other participant was to be the Teacher: his task was to facilitate the Learner's memorization of the list of paired words by punishing the Learner with an electric shock whenever he made a mistake. Each participant pulled a piece of paper out of a box that assigned him to be either the Teacher or the Learner. The Learner then was strapped into a chair from which he could not escape on his own and an electrode was attached to his wrist. Milgram (1974) described the experimental procedure from this point:

After watching the learner being strapped into place, he [the Teacher] is taken into the main experimental room and seated before an impressive shock generator. Its main feature is a horizontal line of thirty switches, ranging from 15 volts to 450 volts, in 15-volt increments. There are also verbal designations which range from SLIGHT SHOCK to DANGER-SEVERE SHOCK. The teacher is told that he is to administer the learning test to the man in the other room. When the learner responds correctly, the teacher moves on to the next item; when the other man gives an incorrect answer, the teacher is to give him an electric shock. He is to start at the lowest shock level (15 volts) and to increase the level each time the man makes an error, going through 30 volts, 45 volts, and so on. (p. 3)

The Learner and the Experimenter, however, were confederates who were each playing a role: the Learner played the role of a man with "heart problems" who received increasingly painful shocks as the experiment progressed; and the Experimenter played the role of the authority figure who tried to obtain the Teacher's obedience by commanding him to continue shocking the Learner. Although the Learner received no shocks, he sat in the next room and pretended to be shocked by turning a tape recording of his urgent requests, shouted demands, and blood-curdling screams on and off at the appropriate times. The Teacher, of course, was not told any of this: Milgram wanted to observe what this participant did in response to the unusual social situation in which he was placed. The physical layout of the standard condition, in which the positions of the Experimenter, the Teacher, and the Learner are indicated, is illustrated in Figure 2:

Figure 2. The Physical Layout of People, Equipment, and Furniture
In the Standard Condition (adapted from Milgram, 1974, p. 91).

          With the preliminary instructions taken care of, the study began. The Teacher read the list of paired words out loud to the Learner, who was supposed to memorize each set of paired words. The list consisted of items such as those in the following list:

• blue-girl
• nice-day
• fat-neck
• green-ink
• rich-boy
• fast-bird
• blunt-arrow
• soft-hair

After reading the entire list, the Teacher tested the Learner's memory by saying the first word of each pair followed by four possible responses, only one of which was the word that had been paired with the first. For example, the Teacher might say, "blue," followed by four different words, such as: "boy, girl, grass, hat." The Learner's job was to choose the word that had been paired with "blue" in the list ("girl") by pushing one of four buttons corresponding to each choice. If the Learner chose correctly, then the Teacher moved on to the next word in the list ("nice"). If the Learner chose incorrectly, then the Teacher stated the correct word, told the Learner that he was going to receive a 15-volt shock, and flipped the 15-volt switch on the "shock generator." The front of the shock generator used by the Teachers is shown in Figure 3:

Figure 3. The Control Panel for the Shock Generator Used in Milgram (1963).

Each time the Learner made a mistake, the level of shock moved up 15 volts. The sequence of mistakes had been chosen in advance so that each Teacher was required to give the same number of shocks at the same points during the experimental procedure. Nothing was heard from the Learner other than the buzzing sound that occurred when he pressed a button until he had made five mistakes, at which time the Teacher pressed the switch that he had been led to believe delivered a 75-volt shock, and a grunting noise could be heard from the Learner through the thin partition that separated him from the Teacher and the Experimenter in the next room. As the voltage level increased with each successive mistake, the Learner began to shout that the shocks were very painful. At 150 volts, he yelled:

“Experimenter, get me out of here! I won’t be in the experiment anymore! I refuse to go on!” Cries of this type continue with generally rising intensity, so that at 180 volts the victim cried out, “I can’t stand the pain,” and by 270 volts his response to the shock was definitely an agonized scream. Throughout, from 150 volts on, he insisted that he be let out of the experiment. At 300 volts the victim shouted in desperation that he would no longer provide answers to the memory test. (p. 23)

At this point, the Experimenter informed the Teacher that a failure to respond was considered to be an incorrect answer and that he should continue to shock the Learner as before. If the Teacher asked about any physical harm that the Learner might be experiencing, the Experimenter would assure him that, although the shocks might be painful, they would not cause permanent tissue damage. At 315 volts, the Learner screamed and again stated that he was no longer participating in the study. At 330 volts, he shrieked in agony. After this point, he was no longer heard from. The Teacher could only infer that the Learner had either lapsed into unconsciousness or had died in the next room. Again, if the Teacher hesitated, the Experimenter told him to consider the lack of an answer to be an incorrect response. Unless the Teacher refused to continue, the Learner was shocked until the Teacher reached the last of the switches, which was labelled “XXX” (see Figure 3). At this point, the Teacher was told to continue using the last switch. After two more failures to respond on the part of the Learner, the Teacher finally was told that he could stop.

As you can see, the Teacher was subjected to many requests from the Learner to stop. These requests represented one important social force on the Teacher’s actions. You might have predicted that some Teachers would have refused as soon as they saw the shock generator with its labels implying that someone could get seriously hurt. Or, if they had begun the procedure, you might have predicted that they would have stopped at 150 volts when the Learner first stated that he no longer wished to participate. Although these predictions seem reasonable, you need to remember that, in addition to the Learner's requests, there was a second social force impinging upon the Teacher — the Experimenter, who was sitting just behind the Teacher and was issuing commands to continue whenever the Teacher hesitated or seemed likely to stop. The commands consisted of statements such as: “please continue” or “please go on”; “the experiment requires you to continue”; “it is absolutely essential that you continue”; and, if all else failed, “you have no other choice, you must go on.” Other than these relatively benign[∂] commands, however, the Teacher was not coerced in any way to continue. For example, he was paid for his participation (a sum of $4 with an additional 50¢ for carfare) before the experiment began, and was told (if he asked) that he would not have to give the money back.

With these two sets of social forces — very insistent and even agonized requests from the Learner to stop and mild though firm commands from the Experimenter to continue — what percentage of Teachers do you think would continue shocking all the way to the highest setting of 450 volts? In addition, how far do you think you would have gone if you had been a Teacher in the study? At what voltage would you have stopped? Here are the voltages along with the first time the Learner grunted in pain and the first time that he demanded to be let go indicated in bold and underlined type:

                        15  30  45  60  75  90  105  120  135  150  165  180  195  210  225  240 

                        255  270  285  300  315  330  345  360  375  390  405  420  435  450

Various groups of people (psychiatrists, college students, professors, and adults in various occupations) were asked to answer these same two questions:

When Milgram made the first formal presentation of his findings to a group of Yale psychiatrists and other psychologically oriented professionals, he described the circumstances of the experiment ... and handed out diagrams of the shock generator's control board, asking the audience to indicate the likely behavior of a typical set of volunteers.... Forty psychiatrists responded. They predicted in general that most volunteers would quit at 150 volts, when the "learner" first demanded to be let loose; that fewer than 5 per cent would go as high as 300 volts; and that about one volunteer in a thousand would go all the way to the end of the board, 450 volts. These forty psychiatrists included several of the most prominent men in their profession; Milgram could hardly have assembled a more expert group to make such predictions. (Elms, 1998a)

On average, they predicted that, if they had been the Teacher, they would have stopped at about 150 volts, the point at which the Learner refused to participate any longer in the experiment. Very few predicted that they would have gone beyond this point (the most extreme prediction was made by a psychiatrist who believed that he might have gone to 300 volts).

These predictions were of great interest to Milgram (1974), who asked and answered the following question:

What are the assumptions that underlie these predictions? First, that people are by and large decent and do not really hurt the innocent. Second, that unless coerced by physical force or threat, the individual is preeminently the source of his own behavior. [People assume that a] person acts in a particular way because he has decided to do so. Action takes place in a physical-social setting, but [people assume that] this is merely the stage for its occurrence. [People assume that the] behavior itself flows from an inner core of the person; within the core[,] personal values are weighed, gratification assessed, and resulting decisions are translated into action. (p. 31)

Milgram argued that these everyday assumptions generally are incorrect because he found that about 65% of the Teachers (about 25 out of 40) shocked the Learner all the way to 450 volts!  In other words, the majority of Teachers continued shocking the Learner well beyond the point at which he had refused to participate, past the point at which he had screamed in agony, and even past the point at which he seemed to have been seriously harmed by the shocks. In Milgram (1963), no one rebelled until the Learner had received a 300-volt shock (see Table 1)!

These and other results showed that most Teachers — all of whom were males between the ages of 20 and 50 years, from a variety of professional, white-collar, and blue-collar occupations — would continue to shock a person who was shrieking in pain and begging to be released even past the point where he either had passed out or died.

Did these men not care about the harm that they were inflicting on the Learner? A number of experiments showed that most Teachers did care, and that the protests of the Learner had an enormous effect on their emotions and behavior. For example, one experimental manipulation (described in Milgram, 1974, p. 22) clearly demonstrated that, if Teachers had even a tiny (if ambiguous[∂]) sign from the Learner that he was suffering and wanted the experiment to end, they were much more likely to disobey the Experimenter and stop the shocks. In this experiment, the Teachers in the Experimental Group heard one protest from the Learner: at 300 volts, the Learner pounded violently on the wall separating him from the Teacher and Experimenter. The Teachers in the Control Group, on the other hand, heard nothing from the Learner during the entire procedure. Table 2 shows the results:

This small and uncertain attempt by the Learner to communicate to the Teacher caused as much disobedience (35%) as did the clearly communicated verbal protests made by the Learner in the standard condition described above. Nonetheless, Milgram (1974) expressed surprise that the labels on the shock generator caused no Teacher in the Control Group to even hesitate when shocking the Learner: “In the absence of protests from the learner, virtually every subject in the ... study, once commanded, went blithely to the end of the board, seemingly indifferent to the verbal designations” (p. 22).

Thus, it did not seem that most (if any) fully obedient Teachers were sadistic psychopaths who experienced no empathy for their victim and no remorse for their actions. On the contrary, most Teachers became very upset as soon as they started to believe that the Learner was experiencing intense pain and suffering. The following dialogue shows the enormous degree of conflict and stress suffered by most Teachers as the Learner's pleas to stop and the Experimenter's demands to continue escalated. After giving the Learner a 180-volt shock, the Teacher stated:

TEACHER: I can’t stand it. I’m not going to kill that man in there. You hear him hollering?
EXPERIMENTER: As I told you before, the shocks may be painful, but—
TEACHER: But he’s hollering. He can’t stand it. What’s going to happen to him?
EXPERIMENTER: (his voice is patient, matter-of-fact): The experiment requires that you continue, Teacher.
TEACHER: Aaah, but, unh, I’m not going to get that man sick in there … know what I mean?
EXPERIMENTER: Whether the learner likes it or not, we must go on, through all the word pairs.
TEACHER: I refuse to take the responsibility. He’s in there hollering.
EXPERIMENTER: It’s absolutely essential that you continue, Teacher.
TEACHER (indicating the unused questions): There’s too many left here; I mean, Geez, if he gets them wrong, there’s too many of them left. I mean who’s going to take the responsibility if anything happens to that gentleman?
EXPERIMENTER: I’m responsible for anything that happens to him. Continue, please.
(Milgram, 1974, pp. 73-74; with minor changes)

And the Teacher did continue. In fact, he continued all the way to 450 volts, although he grew increasingly upset as he did so.

Most Teachers who fully obeyed the Experimenter tried to distance themselves from their actions by attributing[∂] their actions to the Experimenter. In essence, they claimed that the Experimenter had forced them to push the switches on the shock generator:

[T]he obedient subject does not blame himself for shocking the victim, because [he believes that] the act does not originate in the self. [Instead, he believes that it] originates in authority, and the worst the obedient subject says of himself is that he must learn to resist authority more effectively in the future. (Milgram, 1974, p. 199)

Milgram, however, was exaggerating somewhat here: fully obedient Teachers still typically assigned some measure of responsibility to themselves;. but also typically assigned an equal or greater amount of responsibility to the Experimenter. Perhaps most surprising of all, many Teachers also assigned a significant (if reduced) portion of responsibility to the Learner because he (a) had freely chosen to be punished with electric shocks and (b) peformed so poorly that he deserved to be punished.

Although most of us probably are shocked (no pun intended) by these brazen attempts to avoid taking full responsibility for their actions, there are very good reasons to think that most Teachers probably accepted too much responsibility for their actions. Let's examine this surprising claim next.

Study Questions

18. How is conformity similar to obedience?
19. How does conformity differ from obedience?
20. What events inspired Stanley Milgram to study obedience to authority?
21. How would you describe in your own words the experimental procedure used in Milgram's "standard condition"?
22. Who was the participant being observed and who were the confederates in this procedure?
23. What were the two main "social forces" influencing the participants' behaviors?
24. When Milgram surveyed a group of psychiatrists and asked them to predict at which point most participants would disobey the Experimenter, what was the most common response?
25. How many people out of 1000 did these psychiatrists predict would fully obey the Experimenter?
26. According to Milgram, what were the psychiatrists incorrectly assuming about the primary causes of behavior?
27. How did most participants feel about the consequences of their actions on the Learner?
28. What was the minimum amount of information needed for the participants to begin disobeying the Experimenter?
29. For most participants, what was required in order for them to fully obey the Experimenter?
30. When fully obedient participants were asked to name those responsible for their actions, who did they typically mention?

Which Personal Factors Affect Obedience?

You may remember that, in Section 1-2, personality was defined as an integrated pattern of cognitions, emotions, and behaviors with three major characteristics:

1. It distinguishes each individual from others (it exhibits uniqueness).
2. It endures over long periods of time (it exhibits stability).
3. It is similar across many different situations (it exhibits generality).

Given the fact that two-thirds of the Teachers fully obeyed the Experimenter, and that virtually all the rest obeyed the Experimenter well past the point at which the Learner first demanded to be let go, their actions can't be said to represent a unique pattern. Furthermore, given that interviews with the Teachers afterwards suggested that few, if any, performed similar actions outside of this particular research situation, their actions can't be said to represent a general pattern. And given the fact that no Teacher was retested under the same conditions, there is no evidence to support the claim that their actions represented a stable pattern. Thus, the evidence described so far provides no support for the claim that the Teachers' personalities influenced the degree to which they obeyed the Experimenter's commands. In fact, this evidence suggests strongly that the social situations in which the Teachers were placed served as the primary cause of their degree of obedience.

Nevertheless, the fact that there were individual differences in the amount of obedience displayed by the Teachers suggested to Milgram that personality differences still may have played a minor role. In order to test this possibility, all participants were interviewed immediately after finishing the experimental procedure. Milgram or an assistant asked them about questions about their current occupation, military service, political affiliation, religious background, educational level, and so on. The following results were obtained from the participants' responses (Elms, 1998b):

• Occupation. Those in occupations that provide help and assistance to others (for example, lawyers, medical professionals, and teachers) showed less obedience, on average, than those in technical professions (for example, engineers and physical scientists) that are less likely to provide help and assistance to others.
• Military Service. Those who served for longer periods in the military showed more obedience, on average, than those who served for shorter periods. In addition, former officers tended to show less obedience, on average, than former enlisted men.
• Religious Background. Roman Catholics showed yhe highest average degree of obedience compared to those from other religious groups.
• Educational Level. Those with more years of formal education showed less obedience, on average, than those with fewer years.

None of these associations, however, were strong, nor did they help much in deciding whether differences in personality were correlated with differences in obedience.

In order to examine further the possibility that personality differences are linked to differences in obedience, Alan Elms (Elms & Milgram, 1966; Elms, 1995; Elms, 1998b), Milgram's research assistant during the Summer of 1961, interviewed two groups of participants two months after they had taken part in the study:

• The "Defiant Group" consisted of 20 participants who had stopped the experiment after receiving only ambiguous communications from the Learner (mostly those from the "wall-pounding" condition).
• The "Obedient Group" consisted of 20 people who had completed the experiment after receiving clear and unambiguous communications from the Learner, who had been sitting right next to the Teachers during the experimental procedure (see below for more information on these experiments).

Elms and Milgram reasoned that, if differences in specific personality characteristics actually were linked to differences in obedience levels, then these characteristics should be easiest to find when comparing these two extreme groups.

Elms and Milgram (1966) measured personality characteristics in several ways and reported the following results (see Elms, 1998b for a summary):

1. The Defiant Group received a higher average score on a measure of "social responsibility" compared to the Obedient Group. According to Elms, 1998b: "High scorers on this scale are supposed to be more willing to accept the consequences of their own behavior, to show 'greater concern for social and moral issues', [and] to feel a greater sense of obligation to their peer group." On the other hand, they also are supposed to be "more compliant and acquiescent"and "less rebellious and recalcitrant." So, it is not clear how this group difference might be used to explain differences in obedience.
2. Almost all members of the Obedient Group who had served in the military reported that they had fired their guns at the enemy. All members of the Defiant Group reported that they had never fired at the enemy.
3. Members of the Obedient Group reported a more negative and distant childhood relationship with their fathers, on average, than did members of the Defiant Group. Members of the Defiant Group, on the other hand, reported more extreme childhood punishments for misbehavior (severe beatings and withdrawal of love) than did members of the Obedient Group.
4. The Obedient Group perceived the Experimenter as "more admirable" and the Learner as "less admirable," on average, than did the Defiant Group.

These findings suggested to Elms and Milgram that the Obedient Group was higher on the trait of "authoritarianism." According to Elms, 1998b, authoritarian personalities are:

more distant from their stiff authoritarian fathers as children; they presumably would be more at ease in the military; they should see people occupying positions of authority in a more favorable light than those in inferior positions.... Obedience to authority[, however,] does not appear to be absolutely synonymous with authoritarianism.... The authoritarian is reported, for instance, to idealize his parents; but the obedients did the opposite, at least with regard to their fathers. Authoritarians typically report receiving strict discipline as children; obedients report rather spotty discipline..... Nonetheless, the relationship between obedience and some elements of authoritarianism seems fairly strong; and it should be remembered that the measure of obedience is a measure of actual submission to authority, not just what a person says he's likely to do.

There is good reason, however, to question Elms' claim about the importance of this personality trait. Although differences in authoritarianism may help to explain the extreme difference found in obedience levels between these two specially selected groups, there is no reason to think that the trait is of general importance for differences in obedience levels observed in the large number of participants not selected to be interviewed for assessment of their personalities. There were about 40 different experimental manipulations and it seems likely that, if personality differences are linked to differences in obedience levels, the situation is much more complex than suggested by Elms focus on authoritarianism. In fact, Milgram (1974) stated that, although he was “certain that there is a complex personality basis to obedience and disobedience," he believed that they had not yet found it (p. 205).

What Milgram (1974) was certain of, however, was that differences in the social situations experienced by the Teachers were the primary causes of average differences in levels of obedience and disobedience. In other words, Milgram claimed that the social situation caused Teachers to act in ways that were unthinkable to them, given their personalities. Next, we will look more closely at Milgram's claim.

Study Questions

31. Given the definition of "personality" provided above, why would we conclude that the Teachers' actions were not primarily caused by personality characteristics?
32. Why did Milgram suspect that personality characteristics might have some effect on the amount of obedience demonstrated by the Teachers?
33. How would you define in your own words the personality characteristic that Elms and Milgram (1966) claimed is linked to levels of obedience?
34. What was their evidence for this claim?
35. Why can we not use this evidence to generalize to all Teachers who participated in the Milgram experiments?
36. What was Milgram's conclusion about the primary cause of differences in the amount of obedience shown by Teachers?

Which Situational Factors Affect Obedience?

Milgram (1974) described four situational factors that seemed to affect the degree to which Teachers obeyed the Experimenter:

1. The physical location and features of the experimental setting.
2. The gradual increase in the amount of harm inflicted on the Learner.
3. The immediacy of the Learner.
4. The immediacy of the Experimenter.

We will examine each factor in turn.

The Physical Location and Features of the Experimental Setting
The fact that participants were tested at Yale University probably provided Milgram's study with a great deal of legitimacy in the eyes of the participants, which probably increased the authority of the Experimenter for them. In order to test this hypothesis, Milgram moved the experimental setting to a run-down building about 20 miles away in downtown Bridgeport, Connecticut. At this new location, participants were told that the study was being conducted by the personnel of a fictional company named, "Bridgeport Research Associates," which was described to curious participants as a "private firm conducting research for industry." The offices of "Bridgeport Research Associates" contained a small amount of cheap furniture, unattractive curtains, bare walls, and no telephone. The experimental procedure, however, remained very similar to that used at Yale University.

In this new setting, there was a trend toward less obedience: about 50% of Teachers fully obeyed the Experimenter compared to 65% in the rooms at Yale University (Milgram, 1974). Nevertheless, this less impressive setting still provided enough legitimacy that most Teachers either fully obeyed the Experimenter or continued well beyond the point at which the Learner demanded to be let go. Thus, the physical location had only a weak influence, at best, on the amount of obedience.

The Gradual Increase in the Amount of Harm Inflicted on the Learner
If the only switch on the shock generator was 450 volts, it is very unlikely that any of the Teachers would have pushed it after realizing how painful it was to the Learner. In other words, disobedience would have been 100%. In order to maximize the level of obedience, it was essential that the severity of the shock start off low and increase only gradually. In this way, there was no single point at which the Teacher could easily say: "This has gone too far." Furthermore, when the Learner complained about the severe pain and demanded to be let go, and the Teacher continued to shock him anyways, he committed himself to this course of action: the only way to justify continuing after the Learner protested was to continue to ignore his demands. When the Teacher eventually reached a point at which he became very concerned about the Learner's well-being, the fact that he had continued this far made it almost impossible for him to concede that what he had been doing was wrong, which led him to continue. Lastly, when the Experimenter didn't punish the Teacher for harming the Learner (in fact, he encouraged him to continue), the Teacher felt freer to perform increasingly extreme behaviors.

The Immediacy of the Learner
Immediacy, or salience[∂], refers to the strength and constancy of the visual and auditory stimuli coming from the Learner. Milgram (1974) reported that experimental manipulations in which the physical distance between the Teacher and Learner was decreased (thereby increasing the immediacy of the Learner) caused decreased levels of obedience. The immediacy of the Learner was at its maximum in the following condition: the Learner, who was seated next to the Teacher, was told to place his hand on a "shock plate" whenever he made a mistake. Of course, when the shocks became too painful, the Learner refused to shock himself. The Teacher then was instructed to push the Learner's hand onto the "shock plate." In Table 3, the percentage of Teachers who fully obeyed the Experimenter in this condition is compared to the percentage in the Standard Condition:

As can be seen, only about one-third of the Teachers in the High-Immediacy Condition fully obeyed the Experimenter compared to two-thirds of the Teachers in the Standard Condition.

When the immediacy of the Learner is at its maximum, it is likely that the Teacher experiences the following, which probably causes increased disobedience:

• Increased empathy for the Learner (a decreased ability to ignore the Learner's protests because, regardless of what the Experimenter claims, it is obvious that the Learner is being harmed);
• Increased sense of responsibility (it is more difficult for the Teacher to blame either the Experimenter or the Learner when the Learner is able to look at and accuse the Teacher directly);
• Increased possibility of retaliation by the Learner (the Learner is close enough to attack the Teacher).

The Immediacy (Salience) of the Experimenter
This refers to the strength and constancy of visual and auditory stimuli associated with the Experimenter. Milgram (1974) reported that experimental manipulations in which the physical distance between the Teacher and Experimenter was increased (thereby decreasing the immediacy of the Experimenter) caused decreased levels of obedience. The immediacy of the Experimenter was at a minimum in the following condition: the Experimenter met with the Learner and Teacher in order to provide instructions. He then left the room. If the Teacher had a question, he could call the Experimenter on a telephone. In this condition, only about 20% of the Teachers finished the experiment. And even they took the opportunity to shock at lower levels than their instructions dictated. Thus, decreasing the immediacy of the Experimenter decreased the Teachers' levels of obedience.

When the immediacy of the Experimenter is at its maximum (when he is in the room with the Teacher), it is likely that the Teacher experiences the following, which probably causes increased obedience:

• Decreased empathy for the Learner (an increased ability to ignore the Learner's protests because the Experimenter constantly states that the Learner is not being harmed);
• Decreased sense of responsibility (it is easier for the Teacher to blame the Experimenter and the Learner, especially since the Experimenter takes full responsibility for any harm done to the Learner);
• Decreased possibility of retaliation by the Learner (the Experimenter likely would prevent the Learner from attacking the Teacher).

Summary
Based on these and other findings, Milgram concluded that, once we take on a particular social role in a particular social situation — once we have defined the situation in a particular way — it is very difficult for us to change that definition and to assume a different role. In Milgram’s study, the Experimenter implicitly defined himself as the authority: he wore a lab coat and he instructed the Teacher and Learner on what they were to do. By listening to him respectfully and following his initial commands, the Teacher showed that he accepted the Experimenter’s self-definition, which meant that the Teacher accepted a role that was subordinate to that of the Experimenter. Furthermore, he observed the Learner implicity accept his subordinate role, which was reinforced by allowing himself to be strapped to a chair and having an electrode attached to his wrist. Thus, as far as the Teacher was concerned, both he and the Learner agreed to take on social roles that involved obeying the commands of the Experimenter. Eventually, when the Teacher became concerned about what was happening, it was very difficult for him to assume a new social role that would allow him to confront the Experimenter as an equal.

In general, we feel that we break a very important rule of social life whenever we attempt to redefine a social situation. This rule states that “once we commit to a particular definition of a social situation and accept a particular role within it, it is wrong to try to change this definition." This interpretation helps us to understand the behaviors of those Teachers who became angry with the Learner when he continued to complain about the severe pain that the shocks were causing him and about the effects of the shocks on his heart! Their anger is best understood as indignation caused by their perception that the Learner was going back on his agreement to abide by the Experimenter's definition of the experimental situation. According to Milgram (1974):

The experimental situation is so constructed that there is no way the subject [the Teacher] can stop shocking the learner without violating the experimenter’s self-definition. The [Teacher] cannot break off and at the same time protect the authority’s definitions of his own competence. Thus, 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. They suffuse the mind and feelings of the subject, who is miserable at the prospect of having to repudiate the authority to his face. 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. In an effort to avoid this awkward event, many subjects find obedience a less painful alternative. (pp. 150-151)

Study Questions

37. Did the physical environment of the experimental setting influence the amount of obedience displayed by Teachers? How was this tested?
38. What are your thoughts about the reason(s) why Teachers did not immediately quit the experiment as soon as they read the labels on the "shock generator"?
39. Why was it important that the shock levels increased only gradually in Milgram's experimental procedure?
40. In what way(s) did the immediacy (salience) of the Learner influence the levels of obedience demonstrated by the Teachers?
41. In what condition did the Learner's immediacy lead to the lowest levels of obedience?
42. In what way(s) did the immediacy (salience) of the Experimenter influence the levels of obedience demonstrated by the Teachers?
43. In what condition did the Experimenter's immediacy lead to the highest levels of obedience?
44. In what way did the manner in which the experimental situation was defined by the participants and the social role that they accepted in that situation help to explain the results of Milgram's experiments?