This study investigates how obedience in a Milgram-like experiment is predicted by interindividual differences. Participants were 35 males and 31 females aged 26-54 from the general population who were contacted by phone 8 months after their participation in a study transposing Milgram's obedience paradigm to the context of a fake television game show. Interviews were presented as opinion polls with no stated ties to the earlier experiment. Personality was assessed by the Big Five Mini-Markers questionnaire (Saucier, 1994). Political orientation and social activism were also measured. Results confirmed hypotheses that Conscientiousness and Agreeableness would be associated with willingness to administer higher-intensity electric shocks to a victim. Political orientation and social activism were also related to obedience. Our results provide empirical evidence suggesting that individual differences in personality and political variables matter in the explanation of obedience to authority.

Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) both predict generalized prejudice, dehumanization, intergroup discrimination, oppression, and violence, right-wing political party preference and generally punitive attitudes. Authoritarian attitudes have been theorized to involve maladaptive emotional, cognitive and social self-regulation.However, there is no study of authoritarianism using the functioning of the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) as a physiological index of self-regulation, thus leaving it unclear whether regulation is "impaired" with authoritarian attitudes per se. PNS functioning is commonly assessed by examining tonic and phasic heart rate variability (HRV). These two components are recognized to be important in terms of adaptation to stress. Decreased HRV has been associated with hypoactive prefrontal regulation, hyperactive subcortical structures, maladaptive self-regulation, hyper-vigilance, decreased prosocial tendencies, defensiveness, impulsive behaviors and aggression. Previous research suggests that self-regulatory failure may favor hostile attitudes prejudicial intergroup behaviors. In a first study we found that high RWA was associated with lower tonic HRV at rest. In a second study, stress-induced autonomic reactivity and post-stress autonomic recovery were examined as potential pathways linking authoritarian attitudes to self-regulation. We found that high RWA and high SDO were associated (i) with lower tonic HRV during stress, (ii) with greater autonomic reactivity during stress, (iii) lower autonomic recovery. Overall, our results suggest that autonomic dysregulation during and following stress is a plausible physiological pathway connecting RWA and SDO to self-regulation. Implications of such results for research on political attitudes are discussed.

Recent research suggests that obedience in the Milgram paradigm is underpinned by stress vulnerability and inhibitory control over pain sharing. Because self-regulatory fatigue (SRF) induction is a suited method to investigate the influence of inhibitory control on behaviour, participants (n = 99) were randomly assigned to a High vs. Low self-regulatory condition. Heart rate variability (HRV, a biomarker of stress vulnerability) was collected during 5-min baseline and continuously during the experimental procedure. Prior to the experiment, participants completed an online survey assessing right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), a well-known predictor of obedience. Using the Immersive Video Milgram Obedience Experiment, we found (i) that lower resting HRV predicted higher destructive obedience, (ii) that low self-regulatory inhibition (induced by fatigue) reduced destructive obedience, (iii) that the well-established influence of RWA on destructive obedience was suppressed in the presence of SRF. Implications for future directions in obedience research are discussed.

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.

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