CHAPTER 7 CONFORMITY Part 3 Oct 19 2011 REASONS FOR OBEYING MILGRAM Normative informational sources were strong in Milgram s study Explains their initial obedience but why continue to extreme 1 Conforming to the wrong norm obey vs help others 2 Self justification Similar to sequential request strategies Hard to stop following an earlier norm when it becomes inappropriate Fast paced experiment subject had to attend to other details Small increase in levels of shock as experiment progressed dissonance 3 Loss of personal responsibility Just following orders from legitimate authority experimenter Zimbardo s research on execution teams in prisons Compared to fellow guards who didn t execute more disengagement Saw them as threat dehumanized ETHICS OF MILGRAM S EXPERIMENT Criticized for many reasons Milgram s arguments about benefits of the study Deception thought shocks were real they weren t No true informed consent not told of real purpose Created psychological distress for participants Right to withdraw not told of this right you must continue Inflicted insight after the study some learned things about themselves they hadn t agreed to beforehand What we learned about human nature offset trauma to participants Ethical guidelines for experiments in the U S created in 1966 Made obedience studies problematic not done again until 2006 UPDATES ON MILGRAM Burger s 2009 experiment replicated basic procedure Similarity to Milgram Same prods to order participants to continue Adult participants recruited through ads average age in 40s Differences from Milgram s original study Reduced distress by stopping study after 150 volts When disobedience occurred for Milgram it was by 150 v Participants prescreened by clinical psychologist to exclude some Those w 2 college courses were excluded awareness Participants were repeatedly told they could leave at any time Results No signif differences in obedience rate from Milgram up to max level of shock 70 obeyed and would have continued Are people evil ready to inflict pain w any excuse Migram s follow up choose any level of shock you want Only 2 5 voluntarily chose max voltage Reeder Pryor s analysis this social pressures combined w situation to create obedience rate Most people make the FAE when reading Milgram s studies We assume the participants were evil internal attribution and overlook the situational influences APPLICATION CULT BEHAVIOR AND THE JONESTOWN MASSACRE 1978 mass suicide at Jonestown People s Temple with Jim Jones as leader moved from SF to S American jungle 910 people killed themselves on Jones command Many explanations focus on Jones charisma But situational explanations too Jones used foot in the door Required to give 10 income then 25 then everything Removed them from social support In remote location foreign county Set up ingroup outgroup distinctions
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