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

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 for direct orders.

Power and perceived influence: I caused your behavior, but I'm not responsible for it

“…Similar arguments have been made with respect to actors' disavowals of responsibility in arguing that they were "just following orders" (Gibson, 2018). For example, in a rhetorical analysis of post-experiment interviews with participants from the original Milgram studies, Gibson et al (2018) argued that participants' displacement of responsibility onto the experimenter was essentially motivated reasoning-post-hoc, self-serving justifications for their behavior in the study.…”

“…As noted by Galinsky (), “When you're in charge, your whisper may feel like a shout.” Nonetheless, projecting their own deafness onto others, powerful people may raise their voices more and more because they fail to realize how loud they already sound to those around them (cf., Gibson, ).…”

Just following orders? The rhetorical invocation of ‘obedience’ in Stanley Milgram's post‐experiment interviews

“…The issue of whether this means that the experiments are not demonstrations of obedience , however, depends on the conflation of obedience with following orders/commands. The standard social psychological definition of obedience certainly requires orders/commands for something to be understood in terms of obedience, but the key question is arguably whether this was ever a particularly good definition of obedience (Gibson, in press). In everyday language we might, for example, speak of obeying the law, but we do not need direct orders to do so.…”

Saving a victim from himself: The rhetoric of the learner’s presence and absence in the Milgram experiments

“…73-76). In contrast, contemporary researchers study in their own rights the dynamics of argumentation between the experimenter and the teacher, or repertoires of discursive/argumentative characteristics offered by (dis)obedient teachers (Gibson, 2013a(Gibson, , 2013b(Gibson, , 2014(Gibson, , 2017(Gibson, , 2019a(Gibson, , 2019bHollander, 2015;Hollander & Maynard, 2016;Hollander & Turowetz, 2017).…”

“…434–443; cf., Gibson, , p. 298). Acts of ‘obedience’ thus appear not as submissions to orders but defeats in broadly understood argumentative battles (Gibson, , ; Hollander & Maynard, ).…”