Obedience without orders: Expanding social psychology's conception of 'obedience'

The British Journal of Social Psychology
Stephen Gibson

Abstract

Psychologists have typically defined obedience as a form of social influence elicited in response to direct orders from an authority figure. In the most influential set of studies of obedience, conducted by Stanley Milgram in the early 1960s, the orders at the disposal of the authority figure were a series of verbal prods. However, recent research has suggested that Milgram's experiments do not show people following orders. It has therefore been suggested that the experiments are not demonstrations of obedience. However, in the present paper, it is argued that rather than abandoning the idea that Milgram's work is a demonstration of obedience, it is in fact our conceptualization of obedience that is wrong. Obedience should not be understood as requiring direct orders from an authority figure. This argument is developed with reference to an extended case example from one of Milgram's experimental conditions in which a participant completed the experiment in the absence of direct orders. It is argued that such participants can still be understood as obedient if we consider the implicit demands of the system in which participants find themselves. The study concludes by presenting a new definition of obedience that omits the need f...Continue Reading

References

Oct 1, 1963·Journal of Abnormal Psychology·S MILGRAM
Feb 13, 2009·The American Psychologist·Jerry M Burger
Feb 13, 2009·The American Psychologist·Arthur G Miller
Mar 4, 2011·The British Journal of Social Psychology·Nestar John Charles Russell
Mar 4, 2011·The British Journal of Social Psychology·Stephen Reicher, S Alexander Haslam
Oct 20, 2011·The British Journal of Social Psychology·Stephen Gibson
Apr 8, 2014·PloS One·Nick HaslamGina Perry
Jan 13, 2015·The British Journal of Social Psychology·Matthew M Hollander
Jul 1, 2008·Perspectives on Psychological Science : a Journal of the Association for Psychological Science·Dominic J Packer
Jul 1, 2012·Perspectives on Psychological Science : a Journal of the Association for Psychological Science·Stephen D ReicherJoanne R Smith
May 10, 2017·Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews. Cognitive Science·Saul M Kassin
Jun 28, 2017·The British Journal of Social Psychology·Matthew M Hollander, Jason Turowetz

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