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Obedience is a form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order from a person perceived to be a legitimate authority figure. Unlike conformity, obedience involves a clear difference in social status between the person giving the order and the person obeying. In the Edexcel Social Psychology topic, Milgram's research sits at the very centre: it is a named classic study, the springboard for the agency and social impact theories of obedience, and the source of the situational variables (proximity, location, uniform) that the specification requires you to explain. Stanley Milgram's work remains one of the most significant — and most controversial — studies in the history of psychology. This lesson covers the baseline procedure and findings, the situational variations, and the ethical debate that the study provoked.
Key Definition: Obedience is a form of social influence where an individual follows a direct order or instruction from an authority figure. The person who obeys is usually of lower status than the person who gives the order.
By the end of this lesson you should be able to:
Edexcel 9PS0 — Paper 1, Topic 1: Social Psychology. This lesson maps to the specification's requirement to study Milgram's (1963) research into obedience as a classic study, together with the situational variables affecting obedience — proximity, location and uniform — investigated by Milgram in his variations. It also lays the groundwork for the explanations of obedience (agency theory and social impact theory) examined in the next lesson.
Assessment Objectives exercised:
Connects to…
Edexcel questions may require you to compare obedience with conformity, so keep the distinctions sharp:
| Feature | Obedience | Conformity |
|---|---|---|
| Source of influence | An authority figure giving a direct order | The majority of a group exerting implicit pressure |
| Status difference | Yes — the authority figure has higher perceived status | No — influence comes from peers of equal status |
| Explicitness | Explicit — a direct instruction or command | Implicit — pressure to fit in is often unspoken |
| Behaviour change | The person does something they are told to do | The person changes their behaviour to match the group |
| Awareness | The person is usually aware they are being told what to do | The person may not be fully aware of the group's influence |
Milgram conducted his research in the early 1960s, partly motivated by the Second World War and the Holocaust. The trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 raised the question of whether those who carried out atrocities were uniquely evil, or ordinary people who were "simply following orders." The prevailing "Germans are different" hypothesis held that the perpetrators had a defective, particularly obedient national character. Milgram set out to test a situational alternative: that ordinary Americans, given the right circumstances, could be induced to harm an innocent person simply because an authority figure told them to.
The theoretical stakes of this design are worth pausing on, because they shape how the study should be read. If obedience were a matter of national character or a rare, pathological disposition, then the atrocities of the twentieth century would be the work of a distinctive kind of person, and the rest of us could feel safely insulated from them. Milgram suspected the opposite — that the capacity for destructive obedience is latent in ordinary people and is released by particular social arrangements rather than by wickedness. This is why the study is so unsettling: its power lies not in showing that some people are cruel but in showing how easily reluctant, decent people can be led to act against their conscience. Understanding this framing is important for the exam, because it explains why Milgram's contribution is treated as a landmark demonstration of situational forces, and why the surprising size of the effect — set against the psychiatrists' prediction of near-zero full obedience — is the finding that matters most, not the raw fact that some people obeyed.
To investigate whether ordinary people would obey an authority figure's instruction to inflict harm on an innocent person, and to test whether obedience was a product of the situation rather than the disposition of the obeyer.
| Measure | Result |
|---|---|
| Participants reaching 450V (full obedience) | 65% (26 of 40) |
| Participants reaching 300V | 100% — every participant went at least this far |
| Signs of distress | Sweating, trembling, stuttering, groaning, digging fingernails into palms; three participants had full-blown uncontrollable seizures |
Ordinary people are astonishingly willing to obey a legitimate authority figure, even to the point of (apparently) seriously harming an innocent person, and even when they find doing so deeply distressing. Before the study, a panel of psychiatrists had predicted that only around 0.1% would administer the maximum shock — the gulf between this prediction and the 65% obtained demonstrated that obedience is driven far more by the situation than observers intuitively expect. Milgram concluded that the capacity for destructive obedience is a feature of the social situation, not a defect of national character, directly undermining the "Germans are different" hypothesis.
Key Definition (preview): The agentic state is a mental state in which a person sees themselves as an agent carrying out the wishes of an authority figure and therefore feels little personal responsibility for their actions. Milgram used this idea to explain his findings; it is developed fully in the next lesson.
Milgram conducted over 20 variations to identify which situational factors influenced obedience. The three the Edexcel specification names explicitly are proximity, location and uniform.
| Variation | Change | Obedience (to 450V) | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baseline | Original setup at Yale | 65% | High legitimacy of authority |
| Proximity | Learner in same room as teacher | 40% | Harder to ignore the victim's distress; reduces the buffering effect |
| Touch-proximity | Teacher had to force learner's hand onto a shock plate | 30% | Direct physical contact maximises empathic confrontation |
| Experimenter absent / telephoned | Experimenter gave instructions by phone from another room | 20.5% | Reduced immediacy and surveillance of authority; some participants secretly gave lower shocks |
| Run-down office | Study relocated to a run-down office block in Bridgeport, unaffiliated with Yale | 47.5% | Reduced institutional legitimacy of the setting |
| Uniform | Experimenter replaced part-way by an "ordinary member of the public" in everyday clothes | 20% | Removing the symbol of authority (the lab coat) reduces perceived legitimacy |
| Two teachers disobey | Two confederate "teachers" refused to continue (at 150V and 210V) | 10% | Social support; provides a model for defiance and undermines the authority's power |
Proximity lowered obedience because the closer the teacher was to the consequences of their actions, the harder it was to deny responsibility — increasing proximity reduces the psychological buffer between the act and its effect. Location mattered because the prestige of Yale conferred legitimacy; stripping that away (the Bridgeport office) reduced, though did not eliminate, obedience. Uniform mattered because a grey lab coat is a recognised symbol of scientific authority; replacing it with ordinary clothes removed the visual cue that the order-giver was legitimate. Each variation is a clean manipulation of a single situational variable, which is why this body of work is held up as a model of experimental control. These variables are developed further, and connected to social impact theory, in the next two lessons.
graph TD
A["Baseline obedience: 65%"] --> B["Reduce proximity buffer<br/>(learner in same room): 40%"]
A --> C["Reduce location legitimacy<br/>(Bridgeport office): 47.5%"]
A --> D["Reduce authority uniform<br/>(ordinary clothes): 20%"]
A --> E["Add disobedient models<br/>(two teachers refuse): 10%"]
Because ethics is a named issue in Edexcel Social Psychology, and because Milgram's study is the standard case for debating it, you should be able to analyse the study against each major ethical guideline and, crucially, to weigh the harms against the benefits rather than simply listing the breaches. The modern ethical framework (embodied in the British Psychological Society's code) was in significant part shaped by the reaction to studies like this one.
| Ethical guideline | How the study raises the issue | Milgram's defence / mitigation |
|---|---|---|
| Informed consent | Participants agreed to a study on "punishment and learning", not obedience, and did not know the shocks were faked, so consent was not genuinely informed | Full disclosure would have destroyed validity; participants consented to take part, and were fully debriefed afterwards |
| Deception | Deception was extensive — the true aim, the rigged draw, the confederate learner and the fake generator | The deception was arguably necessary for a valid test; it was revealed and explained at debriefing |
| Protection from harm | Participants showed extreme distress; three had seizures; the experience may have altered their self-image | Milgram argued the stress was unforeseen; a follow-up psychiatric assessment found no evidence of lasting harm |
| Right to withdraw | The four prods ("you have no other choice, you must continue") arguably pressured participants to stay, undermining free withdrawal | Participants were physically free to leave, and 35% did in effect withdraw by stopping; the prods were verbal, not coercive restraint |
| Debriefing | Participants left a highly stressful experience whose true nature they did not understand | Milgram debriefed participants, reunited them with the unharmed "Mr Wallace", and surveyed them afterwards |
The cost–benefit analysis is the heart of the ethical debate that Edexcel expects you to conduct. On the cost side sit the deception, the acute distress and the compromised withdrawal. On the benefit side sit findings of profound and enduring value: a demonstration that destructive obedience is a situational phenomenon, with direct implications for understanding atrocities and for designing institutional safeguards. Milgram himself pointed to two mitigating facts: a follow-up survey found 84% of participants were glad to have taken part and felt they had learned something important about themselves, and a psychiatric follow-up a year later found no signs of lasting psychological harm. Against this, Baumrind (1964) argued that the ends do not justify the means and that the damage to participants' trust — and to the reputation of psychology — was itself a serious cost, and Perry's (2012) archival analysis suggested the debriefing was sometimes less thorough than Milgram implied and that some participants were pressured beyond the four standardised prods. A top-band answer does not simply decide the study was ethical or unethical; it lays out the costs and benefits explicitly and reaches a reasoned judgement, typically that the study was ethically problematic by modern standards yet its scientific value was exceptional and its role in shaping those very standards is part of its legacy.
Exam Tip: When Edexcel asks you to discuss the ethics of Milgram's research, structure your answer around the named guidelines (consent, deception, harm, withdrawal, debriefing) and finish with an explicit cost–benefit judgement. Listing breaches without weighing them against the benefits is the most common way able candidates cap their marks here.
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