by Sandi Mann
Case study: The Milgram Experiment
The now-infamous Milgram Experiment was conducted by the Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram (1933–84) and was set up to measure how willing people would be to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that would appear to cause pain to others. The experiments began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of German Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised his psychological study to answer the popular question at that particular time: ‘Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders?’ Milgram wondered whether anyone could be ordered to do unspeakable things if they were told to with enough authority.
The study involved three participants in each scenario: the ‘teacher’ (the subject in the study), who was given a list of word pairs that he was to teach the ‘learner’ (who was actually a confederate). The third person involved was the white-coated experimenter (Milgram) who was leading the study and who told the ‘teacher’ and ‘learner’ what to do. The ‘teacher’ was instructed to read the first word of each pair and read four possible answers. The ‘learner’ would then press a button to indicate his response. If the answer was incorrect, the ‘teacher’ was told to administer a ‘shock’ to the ‘learner’, with the voltage increasing in 15-volt increments for each wrong answer. If the answer was correct, the ‘teacher’ would read the next word pair.
The subjects believed that for each wrong answer the ‘learner’ was receiving actual shocks. In reality, there were no shocks. After a number of voltage-level increases, the ‘learner’ started to bang on the wall that separated him from the subject. After several times banging on the wall and complaining about his heart condition, all responses by the ‘learner’ would cease.
At this point, many of the ‘teachers’, the test subjects, indicated their desire to stop the experiment and check on the learner. Some of the test subjects paused at 135 volts and began to question the purpose of the experiment. However, most continued after being assured that they would not be held responsible – and many by simply being told that they must continue.
Before conducting the experiment, Milgram had polled Yale University senior-year psychology majors, psychiatrists from a medical school and his colleagues to predict the behaviour of the ‘teachers’. Most believed that only a very small fraction of them would be prepared to inflict the maximum voltage. However, 65 per cent of the subjects of the experiment administered the experiment’s final massive 450-volt shock, although many were clearly very uncomfortable doing so.
Spotlight: Preserved for posterity
The original Simulated Shock Generator and Event Recorder, or shock box, is located in the Archives of the History of American Psychology at the University of Akron, in Akron, Ohio.
‘Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not.’
Stanley Milgram, ‘The Perils of Obedience’, Harper’s Magazine (1974)
Although Milgram’s experiments were meant to add weight to our understanding of how the Nazis could carry out their murderous and sadistic acts during the Holocaust, many have criticized the idea that the research can shed much light on the Nazi regime, and for various reasons. For example, Professor James Waller, Chair of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College, pointed out that:
‘While the participants in Milgram’s experiments were assured in advance that no permanent physical damage would result from their actions, the Nazis were clearly fully aware of their hands-on killing and torture of their victims and could not have been unaware that the pain they inflicted was real.
‘While the Milgram experiments were relatively brief, lasting for just an hour, with no time for the subjects to really consider the implications of their behaviour, the Holocaust lasted for years with ample time for participants in the atrocities to realize what they were doing and the implications of it.’
James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 111–13
The other classical study on obedience was conducted at Stanford University during the 1970s by Phillip Zimbardo (see the case study below). It showed how easily people can abuse their authority by demanding excessive obedience when given the opportunity.
Case study: The Stanford Prison Experiment
The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) was a study to investigate brutality and sadistic behaviours within prison systems by guards and hoped to answer the question of whether it was inherent personality that made people act that way – or whether there was some aspect of the environment that caused them to change. Twenty-four male students were selected to take on randomly assigned roles of prisoners and guards in a mock prison situated in the basement of the Stanford psychology building for a period of 7–14 days. The researchers provided the ‘guards’ (who had been screened for personalities that might favour brutal actions) with wooden batons to establish their status, clothing similar to that of an actual prison guard (khaki shirt and pants) and mirrored sunglasses to prevent eye contact. ‘Prisoners’ wore uncomfortable ill-fitting smocks and stocking caps, as well as a chain around one ankle. ‘Guards’ were instructed to call ‘prisoners’ by their assigned numbers, sewn on their uniforms, instead of by name.
The participants adapted to their roles well beyond Zimbardo’s expectations, as the guards enforced authoritarian measures and ultimately subjected some of the prisoners to psychological torture. Many of the ‘prisoners’ passively accepted psychological abuse and, at the request of the guards, readily harassed other prisoners who attempted to prevent it. The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his role as the superintendent, permitted the abuse to continue. Zimbardo aborted the experiment early when Christina Maslach, a graduate student in psychology (who later became an eminent psychologist in her own right), whom he was dating (and later married), objected to the conditions of the prison.
The study showed that the environment can greatly influence how people act and that they take on stereotypical role expectations independent of their own personalities.
‘The most apparent thing that I noticed was how most of the people in this study derive their sense of identity and well-being from their immediate surroundings rather than from within themselves, and that’s why they broke down – just couldn’t stand the pressure – they had nothing within them to hold up against all of this.’
P. G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (New York: Rider, 2007)
Conformity
Conformity is when we are influenced by others because we want to fit in by behaving in ways that are acceptable to them. All groups and societies have their social norms that govern the range of acceptable behaviours within that group, and, if we wish to conform, we will obey these rules. The strength of the urge to conform was nicely demonstrated by a classic study involving the autokinetic effect; this is a visual phenomenon whereby if you have a single stationary source of light in an otherwise pitch-dark room, that light source will appear to move. In 1936 Muzafer Sherif (1906–88), a Turkish-American social psychologist, used this phenomenon to study how people are influenced by other people’s opinions. He put participants in a dark room, first on their own and then with others, and told them to watch a pinpoint of light and report how far it moved (they were not told that this was an illusion so they believed that the light really did move).
On their own, the participants soon established their own individual norms for the judgement of how much the light had moved – usually 5 to 15 cm. In groups, however, Sherif noted a tendency to compromise. People who usually made an estimate like 15 cm soon made smaller judgements like 10 cm. Those who saw less movement, such as 5 cm, soon increased their judgements to about 10 cm. People chang
ed their judgement to resemble more the others in the group. They began to conform to the group norms.
This work was later developed by American psychologist Solomon Asch (1907–96) who, in 1956, conducted the now-classic conformity studies that have helped shape our understanding of the factors that contribute towards conformity and minority influence. College students participated in a ‘perceptual’ task where all but one of the participants were confederates (i.e. actors), and the true focus of the study was about how the remaining student (i.e. the real participant) would react to the confederates’ behaviours.
Each participant was placed in a room with seven ‘confederates’. Participants were shown a card with a line on it, followed by a card with three lines on it (lines labelled A, B and C, respectively). Participants were then asked to say aloud which line (i.e. A, B or C) matched the line on the first card in length. Prior to the experiment, all confederates were told to unanimously give the incorrect response. The group was arranged so that the participant was always the last to respond. Would the participant change his answer and respond in the same way as the confederates, despite it obviously being the wrong answer?
Overall, in the experimental group, 75 per cent of the participants gave an incorrect answer to at least one question.
In follow-ups to this study, Asch found that the subjects conformed much less if they had an ‘ally’ – one other person who gave the correct answer. There were several reasons for these findings. First, the real subject was reassured that the others did not ridicule the dissenter for his answer. Secondly, the dissenter’s answers gave the participant more confidence in his own answer. This ‘ally effect’ increased with the number of allies – until two or three, whereby there was no further increase in the number of subjects prepared to give the correct answers.
Other factors affecting conformity were later examined and include group cohesiveness such that the more we are attracted to a group and want to belong to it the more we conform.
Minority influence
Discussion of conformity and ally effects leads nicely on to the role of minority influence, a form of social influence that takes place when a member of a minority group, like an individual, influences a majority to accept the minority’s beliefs or behaviour. Whereas majority influence occurs when people conform to certain beliefs and behaviours in order to be accepted by others or to fit in, minority influence does not influence others through this normative social influence (i.e. where we are influenced by social norms) because most people are less concerned with fitting in with a minority.
To influence the majority, then, the minority would be better taking an informational social influence approach whereby they convince others that they are correct (rather than trying to work on their need to fit in). In 1969 the Romanian-born French psychologist Serge Moscovici (1925–2014) used a variation of the Asch paradigm (using coloured slides rather than lines, which Moscovici felt were more ambiguous and thus a better test) and identified a number of factors as being important for a minority to have an influence over a majority. These include:
• Consistency: the minority must be consistent and unchanging in their opinion if they are to exert the most influence. This is important because it shows that the minority is committed to their viewpoint, even in the face of opposition from many others, and creates doubt in the minds of the majority about their own view.
• Flexibility: Researchers have questioned whether consistency on its own is enough for a minority to influence a majority. If the consistent minority is viewed by the majority as inflexible, rigid, uncompromising and dogmatic, they will have less influence. However, if they appear flexible and compromising, they are likely to be seen as less extreme, as more moderate, cooperative and reasonable. As a result, they will have a better chance of changing majority views.
• Identification: People tend to identity with people they see as similar to themselves. Research indicates that, if the majority identifies with the minority, they are more likely to take the views of the minority seriously and change their own views in line with those of the minority.
Dig deeper
Debunking the myth of Kitty Genovese:
http://nypost.com/2014/02/16/book-reveals-real-story-behind-the-kitty-genovese-murder/
Stanford Prison Experiment website:
http://www.prisonexp.org/
Asch conformity experiments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyDDyT1lDhA
Fact-check
1 Which of the following is not a form of social influence?
a Conformity
b Generalized anxiety
c Socialization
d Obedience
2 In the Bystander Effect, which of the following influences their decision to act or not?
a How anxious they feel about what they have seen
b Whether they know the person needing help
c Whether other people persuade them to help
d Whether they have helped in the past
3 What is social facilitation?
a The tendency for people to do better on simple tasks that they are already good at when in the presence of other people
b The tendency for people to do better on complex tasks when in the presence of other people
c The tendency for people to do better on simple and complex tasks when in the presence of other people
d The tendency for people to do worse on simple tasks that they are already good at when in the presence of other people
4 Possible explanations for the social facilitation effect do not include:
a The alertness hypothesis
b The challenge and threat hypothesis
c The evaluation apprehension hypothesis
d The reciprocity hypothesis
5 Which one of the following is not one of Cialdini’s Six Weapons of Influence?
a Cohesion
b Social proof
c Liking
d Scarcity
6 Obedience is likely to be increased when the person instilling authority:
a Is wearing a lab coat
b Talks in a higher pitch
c Speaks faster than usual
d Wears a hat
7 The autokinetic effect is:
a When a light source in a dark room moves
b When people agree that matching lines don’t match
c When a light source in a dark room appears to move
d When people over-estimate the amount of movement of a light in the presence of others
8 Both Sherif and Asch’s studies show that:
a Optical illusions are common
b People can’t trust their own judgements
c We conform to the view of others around us
d We obey authority when faced with uncertainty
9 Subjects conform much less if they have an ally because:
a They want to obey the ally
b The ally gives them confidence in their own judgement
c The ally is an authoritarian figure
d The ally allows social facilitation to occur
10 Which of the following does not have an impact on the influence a minority can have on the majority?
a Consistency
b Flexibility
c Identification
d Social proof
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Social and group processes
Humans are inherently social creatures who rely on interpersonal relationships to sustain many elements of their existence. We prefer to live in groups, not alone, and our behaviour towards others affects how well those groups function and how well we fit in. Social processes are the ways in which individuals and groups interact and establish relationships with one other. These patterns of behaviour are modified and adapted through social interactions. This chapter examines a range of social interactions and processes that influence and create our social existence.
Stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination
We encounter many pe
ople in our day-to-day lives and, like many stimuli, the range and sheer numbers can sometimes lead to cognitive overload. We cope with this overload by making cognitive short cuts that help us simplify and classify the stimuli we encounter. One such short cut is the use of stereotypes; employing this technique probably gave us a selective advantage in our evolutionary past as it would have allowed us to establish very quickly who was friend (a member of our own in-group) and who was foe (a member of the out-group). Stereotypes can thus help us make sense of the world. They are a form of categorization that helps to simplify and systematize information. Thus, information is more easily identified, recalled, predicted and reacted to.
Spotlight: A ‘small brain’
As recently as 1964, the Encyclopædia Britannica entry for ‘Races of Mankind’ described ‘woolly-haired groups’ as having: ‘dark skin sometimes almost black, broad noses, usually a rather small brain in relation to their size’.
Stereotypes, then, are beliefs about people based on their membership of a particular group and they can be positive or negative. They allow us to quickly process new information about an event or a person without having to think too deeply. They help us to assess differences between individuals and groups at speed and to make apparently useful predictions about other people’s behaviour. The problem with stereotypes, of course, is that they are often wrong because they are based on broad characteristics – and may sometimes even be simply the result of prejudice. Prejudice is a negative belief or feeling about a particular group of individuals and is a phenomenon that has benefit for the individual holding it; for example, it provides scapegoats in times of trouble, can boost self-esteem (by putting others down), it allows them to strengthen their own group bonds by being negative about other groups, and it legitimizes discrimination because it apparently justifies one group’s dominance over another.