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Curr Psychol (2010) 29:155170
DOI 10.1007/s12144-010-9080-z
Piero Bocchiaro & Philip G. Zimbardo
Published online: 2 May 2010# The Author(s) 2010. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract This research explores the psychological factors potentially involved in fostering disobedience to an unjust authority. Our paradigm was modeled after that of the Utrecht Studies on Obedience (Meeus and Raaijmakers European Journal of Social Psychology 16:311-324, 1986) in which participants are ordered to give each of 15 increasingly hostile comments to a participant/victim whenever he fails a trial. Although 30% of our sample followed commands to insult the other participant (confederate), the majority did refuse to do so at some point in the escalating hostility sequence. Our procedure utilized conditions known from prior research to increase the ratio of disobedience to obedience: proximity of teacher to learner plus remote authority. In order to better understand some of the cognitive and affective processes that may predict such defiant behaviour, we utilized a variety of measures, among them, behavioural observations, individual difference assessments, and in depth post-experimental interviews.
Keywords Disobedience . Authority figure . Obedience
Mainstream social psychology has largely focused on individuals failings rather than on their strengths (see Seligman 2004). A body of such research reveals the circumstances under which ordinary people can be induced to behave badly toward others, even to committing atrocious acts. In the most well known and influential of these studies, Milgram (1963) demonstrated that on average 65% of participants were willing to administer apparently painful and dangerous electric shocks to an innocent victim when ordered to do so by a seemingly legitimate authority. Across a
P. Bocchiaro (*)
Faculty of Psychology and Education, Vrije Universiteit, Van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT Amsterdam, The Netherlandse-mail: [email protected]
P. G. Zimbardo
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA e-mail: [email protected]
Defying Unjust Authority: An Exploratory Study
156 Curr Psychol (2010) 29:155170
host of 19 separate experiments, which included the participation of a thousand ordinary American citizens, Milgram found that obedience levels could range from near zero to soar over 90% by varying one social psychological factor in each study. The highest levels of obedience were found when the subject only aided in the procedure but someone else pressed...