Abstract
Abstract. Studies on obedience to authority highlight the power of the situation by showing how an experimental setting can trap participants and force them to commit acts contrary to their values (Bocchiaro & Zimbardo, 2010). The source of obedience has generally been represented by an institutional scientific authority. In the present experiment, we tested a more widespread form of authority: a managerial authority implemented in the form of an administrative violence paradigm (Meeus & Raaijmakers, 1986). Specifically, we compared two forms of authority: obedience to authority as manipulated by Meeus and Raaijmakers (1986), where the requests are made in an authoritarian manner, and compliance without pressure, where the participant is told that he is free to do what is requested (Enzle & Harvey, 1982). The results illustrate that a substantial level of obedience can be elicited even in the absence of explicit authoritarian pressure.
References
(2002). Social Cognitive Theory in Cultural Context. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 51, 269–290.
(1999). Evil is more than banal: Situationism and the concept of evil. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, 246–253.
(2002). Immersive virtual environment technology as a methodological tool for social psychology. Psychological Inquiry, 13, 103–104.
(2010). Defying unjust authority: An exploratory study. Current Psychology, 29, 155–170.
(2001). The peritraumatic distress inventory: A proposed measure of PTSD criterion A2. American Journal of Psychiatry, 158, 1480–1485.
(2009). Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today? American Psychologist, 64, 1.
(2011). In their own words: Explaining obedience to authority through an examination of participants’ comments. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2, 460–466.
(2009). Virtual Milgram: Empathic concern or personal distress? Evidence from functional MRI and dispositional measures. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 3, 1–10.
(2010). Reopening the study of extreme social behaviors: Obedience to authority within an immersive video environment. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40, 760–773.
(1983). The Court Society. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
(1982). Rhetorical request for help. Social Psychology Quarterly, 45, 172–176.
(2013). Milgram’s obedience experiments: A rhetorical analysis. The British Journal of Social Psychology, 52, 290–309.
(1982). Twenty years of deception in social psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 8, 402–408.
(2012). Contesting the “Nature” of Conformity: What Milgram and Zimbardo’s studies really show. PLoS Biology, 10, e1001426.
(2008). Deception in experiments: Revisiting the arguments in its defense. Ethics & Behavior, 18, 1–34.
(2006). The policy context of torture: A social-psychological analysis. International Review of the Red Cross, 87(857), 123–134.
(1989). Crimes of obedience: Toward a social psychology of authority and responsibility. New Haven, CT/London, UK: Yale University Press.
(2009). Promoting aggression and violence at Abu Ghraib: The US Military’s Transformation of ordinary people into torturers. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 14, 388–395.
(1986). Administrative obedience: Carrying out orders to use psychological-administrative violence. European Journal of Social Psychology, 16, 311–324.
(1995). Obedience in modern society: The Utrecht studies. Journal of Social Issues, 51, 155–175.
(1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 371–378.
(1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. New York, NY: Harper & Row.
(1986). The obedience experiments: A case study of controversy in social science. New York, NY: Praeger.
(2008). Identifying systematic disobedience in Milgram’s obedience experiments: A meta-analytic review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 301–304.
(2011). After shock? Toward a social identity explanation of the Milgram “obedience” studies. The British Journal of Social Psychology, 50, 163–169.
(2012). Working towards the experimenter: Reconceptualizing obedience within the Milgram paradigm as identification-based followership. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 315–324.
(2006). A virtual reprise of the Stanley Milgram obedience experiments. PloS One, 1, 1–10.
(2001). Deception by researchers is necessary and not necessarily evil. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 431–432.
(2013). Obstacles to ethical decision-making: Mental models, Milgram and the problem of obedience. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
