Social influence: Situational factors in Obedience
Proximity: Indicates the physical closeness, Milgram’s variation (e.g., orders over the
telephone reduced to 20%) suggests the closer the authority figure the more obedience
that is demonstrated.
In a variation the learner was brought into the same room as the teacher (participant)
obedience decreased from the original 65% to 40%, so being closer to the consequences
decreases obedience.
Location: In a Milgram variation where the setting changed from Yale university to a ran down
office block, obedience reduced to 47.5%. Therefore, people are more obedient in settings that
suggest a legitimacy of authority (for the experimenter).
Uniform: In Milgram’s initial study the experimenter wore a lab coat and obedience was at 65%,
when the experimenter was a replaced with a generic member of the public without a lab coat,
obedience dropped to 20%.
Bickman investigated the power of uniform in a field experiment each wore either a security guard,
milk man or pedestrian clothes. Gave public orders e.g., to pick up litter. The guard was obeyed
76% of times and the milkman and pedestrian significantly less. Results are likely due to the state of
legitimate authority and power that uniform can suggest.
Evaluation A03
Research that criticises Proximity: Milgram’s findings into Proximity have been challenged by
Hofling et al. who asked someone acting as an unknown doctor to call nurses and ask them to
overdose a patient with a drug unknown to the nurses, 21/22 obeyed suggesting proximity to the
person giving orders was not necessary to obey the orders, criticising Milgram’s conclusions.
Counterpoint: Perhaps a better explanation of why people obey is the agentic state, where people
feel they do not have responsibility when they act out orders given by someone else, instead the
responsibility is on the person who gave the orders, this explains Hofling’s findings and acts as a
strong alternative explanation for Milgram’s also.
Methodological issues: Although Milgram did use systematic procedures in his variational studies
systematic procedures to ensure that cause and effect could be established, the variation are
criticised for a lack of ecological validity due to the artificial setting lacking mundane realism. And
therefore, demand characteristics could have caused participant to behave in ways that weren’t
natural, when researcher was replaced with a member of the public as they could have worked out
it wasn’t real (reducing internal validity too). Therefore, research into situational variables may be
telling us little about why people obey. (Developed) Furthermore, smith and bond found large
cultural differences in obedience, so it is difficult to generalise conclusions based on limited samples
within this type of research, suggesting research into situational effects on obedience is perhaps
limited and under-researched.
Contradictory research: Mandel found that in WW2, mass killing of the jews were undertaken in
close proximity of the victims without protest, though proximity to suggest that obedience should
drop the closer one is to the consequences, Further, Mandel argues the idea that situational
variables causes one to obey is offensive to survivors of the holocaust as it offers an ‘alibi for evil’.
