Obedience to authority as a function of the physical proximity of the student, teacher, and experimenter.

The authors are proposing a theoretical model explaining the behavior of individuals tested through experiments on obedience toward authority conducted according to Milgram's paradigm. Their assumption is that the participant faces typical avoidance-avoidance conflict conditions. Participant does not want to hurt the learner in the adjacent room but he or she also does not want to harm the experimenter. The solution to this conflict, entailing hurting on of the two, may be different depending on the spatial organization of the experiment. In the study, experimental conditions were modified, so that the participant was (vs. was not) in the same room as the experimenter and was (vs. was not) in the same room as the learner. Forty individuals (20 women and 20 men) were tested in each of the four experimental conditions. It turns out that the physical presence of the experimenter was conducive to obedience, while the physical presence of the learner reduced it.

You and I are alike, so I will hold back - The effect of directed empathy on the behavior of participants of Stanley Milgram's obedience paradigm.

Experiments on obedience to authority conducted under the paradigm developed by Milgram have demonstrated that empathy plays either no or a very limited role in determining participants' behaviors. This study proposes that this occurs due to participants empathizing with both "learners" and experimenters. Empathy with learners makes participants withdraw from the experiment, while empathy with experimenters makes them continue. Therefore, the more that participants are characterized by dispositional empathy, the more they are reluctant to hurt learners but, at the same time, the more they try not to disappoint experimenters. This study investigates the effects of empathy being situationally directed toward learners. After manipulating the alleged similarities between "teachers" and "learners" in terms of crucial attitudes and values, the degree to which teachers obeyed experimenters and were willing to electrocute learners was measured. The results confirm that situationally directed empathy reduces participants' obedience to experimenters.

Engaged followership and toxic science: Exploring the effect of prototypicality on willingness to follow harmful experimental instructions.

Drawing on the 'engaged followership' reinterpretation of Milgram's work on obedience, four studies (three pre-registered) examine the extent to which people's willingness to follow an experimenter's instructions is dependent on the perceived prototypicality of the science they are supposedly advancing. In Studies 1, 2 and 3, participants took part in a study that was described as advancing either 'hard' (prototypical) science (i.e., neuroscience) or 'soft' (non-prototypical) science (i.e., social science) before completing an online analogue of Milgram's 'Obedience to Authority' paradigm. In Studies 1 and 2, participants in the neuroscience condition completed more trials than those in the social science condition. This effect was not replicated in Study 3, possibly because the timing of data collection (late 2020) coincided with an emphasis on social science's importance in controlling COVID-19. Results of a final cross-sectional study (Study 4) indicated that participants who perceived the study to be more prototypical of science found it more worthwhile, reported making a wider contribution by taking part, reported less dislike for the task, more happiness at having taken part, and more trust in the researchers, all of which indirectly predicted greater followership. Implications for the theoretical understanding of obedience to toxic instructions are discussed.

Robot Authority in Human-Robot Teaming: Effects of Human-Likeness and Physical Embodiment on Compliance.

The anticipated social capabilities of robots may allow them to serve in authority roles as part of human-machine teams. To date, it is unclear if, and to what extent, human team members will comply with requests from their robotic teammates, and how such compliance compares to requests from human teammates. This research examined how the human-likeness and physical embodiment of a robot affect compliance to a robot's request to perseverate utilizing a novel task paradigm. Across a set of two studies, participants performed a visual search task while receiving ambiguous performance feedback. Compliance was evaluated when the participant requested to stop the task and the coach urged the participant to keep practicing multiple times. In the first study, the coach was either physically co-located with the participant or located remotely via a live-video. Coach type varied in human-likeness and included either a real human (confederate), a Nao robot, or a modified Roomba robot. The second study expanded on the first by including a Baxter robot as a coach and replicated the findings in a different sample population with a strict chain of command culture. Results from both studies showed that participants comply with the requests of a robot for up to 11 min. Compliance is less than to a human and embodiment and human-likeness on had weak effects on compliance.

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

This paper contests what has remained a core assumption in social psychological and general understandings of the Milgram experiments. Analysing the learner/victim's rhetoric in experimental sessions across five conditions (N = 170), it demonstrates that what participants were exposed to was not the black-and-white scenario of being pushed towards continuation by the experimental authority and pulled towards discontinuation by the learner/victim. Instead, the traditionally posited explicit collision of 'forces' or 'identities' was at all points of the experiments undermined by an implicit collusion between them: rendering the learner/victim a divided and contradictory subject, and the experimental process a constantly shifting and paradoxical experiential-moral field. As a result, the paper concludes that evaluating the participants' conduct requires an understanding of the experiments where morality and non-destructive agency were not simple givens to be applied to a transparent case, but had to be re-created anew - in the face not just of their explicit denial by the experimenter but also of their implicit denial by the victim.

Multiple compliant processes: A reply to Haslam and Reicher on the engaged followership explanation of 'obedience' in Milgram's experiments.

Haslam and Reicher (2018, Br. J. Soc. Psychol., 57, 292-300) offer a thoughtful rejoinder to our critique (Hollander & Turowetz, 2017, Br. J. Soc. Psychol, 56, 655-674) of their theory of engaged followership, currently the most important explanation of 'obedient' behaviour in the Milgram paradigm. Our immersion in Milgram's archived audio recordings has led us to new findings about participants' perspectives, as well as to dissatisfaction with the theory in its present version. Following a brief discussion of our findings, which cast the theory in doubt, we respond to Haslam and Reicher's argument that these data may in fact be consistent with it. Our response identifies three limitations of engaged followership emerging from this debate. Despite the strengths of the theory and these authors' impressive re-analysis of our findings, important reasons remain for scepticism that engaged followership operated in Milgram's experiments in the way, and to the extent, that they claim. Rather, 'obedience' appears amenable to multiple empirically grounded explanations, only one of which is engaged followership.

A truth that does not always speak its name: How Hollander and Turowetz's findings confirm and extend the engaged followership analysis of harm-doing in the Milgram paradigm.

Hollander and Turowetz (2017, Br. J. Soc. Psychol., 56, 655-674) present important data from post-experimental interviews with participants in Milgram's 'obedience' research. In these, participants responded to various questions about their perceptions of the study and their behaviour by indicating that they trusted the Experimenter not to let them inflict serious harm. Relatively few participants indicated that they acted as they did because they were committed to the Experimenter or to science. We argue, however, that there are two key reasons why this evidence is not inconsistent with claims that harm-doing is a product of engaged followership. The first is that (in contrast to the data obtained from later post-experimental surveys) the conversational logic of the interviews does not topicalize a discussion or valorization of science, but instead requires participants to defend themselves against an accusation of improper behaviour. The second is that participants' accounts of their behaviour nevertheless revolved around expressions of trust in the Experimenter which can themselves be seen as manifestations of shared identity and engaged followership. Nevertheless, we argue that H&T's analysis points to significant ways in which the engaged followership account and its broader implications for understanding perpetrator behaviour can be embellished.

Surgical Treatment of Confirmed Intraosseous Lipoma of the Calcaneus: A Case Series.

Intraosseous lipoma of the calcaneus is a benign lesion formed by mature adipose tissue. When the lesion is symptomatic, the most frequent presentation is localized pain and soft tissue swelling. Because these lesions can regress spontaneously, conservative treatment methods are recommended. Operative excision is mostly required for painful lesions and pathologic fractures. The data from 14 patients with calcaneal intraosseous lipoma, who had undergone surgery in our clinic, were evaluated retrospectively. Using Milgram's classification system, 9 lesions were classified as stage 1, 4 as stage 2, and 1 as stage 3. All lesions were occupying 100% of intracalcaneal cross-section in the coronal plane and >30% in the sagittal plane of magnetic resonance imaging sections. The mean preoperative visual analog scale score was 5.29 ± 1.14 (range 4 to 7), and the mean postoperative visual analog scale score at the last follow-up visit was 1.14 ± 0.36 (range 1 to 2), which was significantly better (p < .01). The mean Maryland foot score at the last follow-up visit was 97.71 ± 2.02 (range 95 to 100). The mean American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society Ankle-Hindfoot scale score was 97.86 ± 2.11 (range 94 to 100) at the last follow-up visit. The differences between the pre- and postoperative values were statistically significant (p < .01). No recurrence had been detected within a median follow-up period of 84 months. Operative management of symptomatic lesions related to intraosseous lipoma of the calcaneus provides better results compared with the preoperative state.

Normalizing trust: Participants' immediately post-hoc explanations of behaviour in Milgram's 'obedience' experiments.

We bring an ethnomethodological perspective on language and discourse to a data source crucial for explaining behaviour in social psychologist Stanley Milgram's classic 'obedience' experiments - yet one largely overlooked by the Milgram literature. In hundreds of interviews conducted immediately after each experiment, participants sought to justify their actions, often doing so by normalizing the situation as benign, albeit uncomfortable. Examining 91 archived recordings of these interviews from several experimental conditions, we find four recurrent accounts for continuation, each used more frequently by 'obedient' than 'defiant' participants. We also discuss three accounts for discontinuation used by 'defiant' participants. Contrary to what a leading contemporary theory of Milgramesque behaviour - engaged followership - would predict, 'obedient' participants, in the minutes immediately following the experiment, did not tend to explain themselves by identifying with science. Rather, they justified compliance in several distinct and not entirely consistent ways, suggesting that multiple social psychological processes were at work in producing Milgram's 'obedient' outcome category.

Perpetrator as a Potential Victim. Does Threatened Retaliation from the Victim Reduce Obedience towards Authority?

In an experiment conducted within the Milgram paradigm, it was examined whether obedience towards an authority would be reduced in conditions in which the teacher had grounds to fear revenge from the learner. A comparison was made of the behaviour of participants in classic conditions and in conditions in which they were told that following the first part of the experiment, there would be an alteration of roles: the teacher would become the learner. It turned out that the level of compliance was the same in both groups. The dominant behaviour, regardless of whether the participant expects a change of roles or not, is total obedience.

On Shermer on morality.

This is my critical commentary on Michael Shermer's paper "Morality is real, objective, and natural." Shermer and I agree that morality is both real and objective. Here I raise serious reservations about both Shermer's account of where morality comes from and his account of what morality tells us to do. His approach to the foundations of morality would allow some very disturbing behaviors to count as moral, and his approach to what morality says does not provide the action guidance we need from a moral theory.

Diagnosing true virtue? Remote scenarios, warranted virtue attributions, and virtuous medical practice.

Immanuel Kant argues in the Foundations that remote scenarios are diagnostic of genuine virtue. When agents commonly thought to have a particular virtue fail to exhibit that virtue in an extreme situation, he argues, they do not truly have the virtue at all, and our propensities to fail in such ways indicate that true virtue might never have existed. Kant's suggestion that failure to show, say, courage in extraordinary circumstances necessarily silences one's claim to have genuine courage seems to rely on an implausibly demanding standard for warranted virtue attributions. In contrast to this approach, some philosophers-such as Robert Adams and John Doris-have argued for probabilistic accounts of warranted virtue attributions. But despite the initial plausibility of such accounts, I argue that a sole reliance on probabilistic approaches is inadequate, as they are insufficiently sensitive to considerations of credit and fault, which emerge when agents have developed various insurance strategies and protective capacities against their responding poorly to particular eventualities. I also argue that medical graduates should develop the sorts of virtuous dispositions necessary to protect patient welfare against various countervailing influences (even where such influences might be encountered only rarely), and that repeated failures to uphold the proper goals of medicine in emergency scenarios might indeed be diagnostic of whether an individual practitioner does have the relevant medical virtue. In closing, I consider the dispositions involved in friendship. I seek to develop a principled way of determining when remote scenarios can be illuminating of genuine friendship and genuine virtue.

The repertoire of resistance: Non-compliance with directives in Milgram's 'obedience' experiments.

This paper is the first extensive conversation-analytic study of resistance to directives in one of the most controversial series of experiments in social psychology, Stanley Milgram's 1961-1962 study of 'obedience to authority'. As such, it builds bridges between interactionist and experimental areas of social psychology that do not often communicate with one another. Using as data detailed transcripts of 117 of the original sessions representing five experimental conditions, I show how research participants' resistance to experimental progressivity takes shape against a background of directive/response and complaint/remedy conversational sequences--sequence types that project opposing and competing courses of action. In local contexts of competing sequential relevancies, participants mobilize six forms of resistance to the confederate experimenter's directives to continue. These range along a continuum of explicitness, from relatively subtle resistance that momentarily postpones continuation to techniques for explicitly trying to stop the experiment. Although both 'obedient'- and 'defiant'-outcome participants use all six of the forms, evidence is provided suggesting precisely how members of the two groups differ in manner and frequency of resistance.

'Happy to have been of service': the Yale archive as a window into the engaged followership of participants in Milgram's 'obedience' experiments.

This study examines the reactions of participants in Milgram's 'Obedience to Authority' studies to reorient both theoretical and ethical debate. Previous discussion of these reactions has focused on whether or not participants were distressed. We provide evidence that the most salient feature of participants' responses - and the feature most needing explanation - is not their lack of distress but their happiness at having participated. Drawing on material in Box 44 of Yale's Milgram archive we argue that this was a product of the experimenter's ability to convince participants that they were contributing to a progressive enterprise. Such evidence accords with an engaged followership model in which (1) willingness to perform unpleasant tasks is contingent upon identification with collective goals and (2) leaders cultivate identification with those goals by making them seem virtuous rather than vicious and thereby ameliorating the stress that achieving them entails. This analysis is inconsistent with Milgram's own agentic state model. Moreover, it suggests that the major ethical problem with his studies lies less in the stress that they generated for participants than in the ideologies that were promoted to ameliorate stress and justify harming others.

Revisiting Milgram's Cyranoid Method: Experimenting With Hybrid Human Agents.

In two studies based on Stanley Milgram's original pilots, we present the first systematic examination of cyranoids as social psychological research tools. A cyranoid is created by cooperatively joining in real-time the body of one person with speech generated by another via covert speech shadowing. The resulting hybrid persona can subsequently interact with third parties face-to-face. We show that naïve interlocutors perceive a cyranoid to be a unified, autonomously communicating person, evidence for a phenomenon Milgram termed the "cyranic illusion." We also show that creating cyranoids composed of contrasting identities (a child speaking adult-generated words and vice versa) can be used to study how stereotyping and person perception are mediated by inner (dispositional) vs. outer (physical) identity. Our results establish the cyranoid method as a unique means of obtaining experimental control over inner and outer identities within social interactions rich in mundane realism.

Las coordenadas de la obediencia. Milgram a través de la lectura de Zygmunt Bauman / The coordinates of obedience. Milgram through reading Zygmunt Bauman

El reconocido sociólogo polaco Zygmunt Bauman destaca un valor central en las investigaciones de Stanley Milgram: la demostración de que los actos crueles no los cometen individuos crueles, sino sujetos comunes que intentan alcanzar el éxito en sus tareas normales. La crueldad tiene escasa relación con las características psicológicas de quienes la llevan a cabo, y sí tiene una fuerte vinculación con la relación de autoridad y subordinación, vale decir, con nuestra normal y cotidiana estructura de poder y obediencia. Este artículo discute las coordenadas que explican tal sumisión a la autoridad: 1) la distancia social; 2) la paradoja de la acción secuencial; 3) la moralización de la tecnología; 4) la responsabilidad flotante; 5) la concentración del poder

The well knowed Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman highlights a core value in investigations of Stanley Milgram: the demonstration that cruel acts are committed by individuals not cruel, but common subjects trying to succeed in their normal duties. Cruelty has little to do with the psychological characteristics of those who carry it out, but does have a strong link with the relationship of authority and subordination, ie normal, everyday power structures and obedience. This article discusses the coordinates that explain such submission to authority: 1) social distance, 2) the sequential action paradox, 3) the moralization of technology; 4) unfunded liability, 5) the concentration of power

"Ahora que lo sabes, ¿cómo te sientes?" El Experimento de Stanley Milgram y la psicologización / \"Now that you know, how do you feel ?\" Stanley Milgram Experiment and psychologizing

El experimento de Stanley Milgram puede ser pensado como un montaje acerca de la psicologización. Una situación intersubjetiva es puesta en escena con el objetivo de individualizarla y psicologizarla. A partir de este planteo, el trabajo presenta una serie de objeciones basadas en la premisa de que para Jacques Lacan la psicología es una poderosa herramienta de la “explotación tecnocrática”. La experiencia de Milgram ilustraría tal premisa, ya que su ingenioso diseño experimental desemboca en la imposición coercitiva del discurso de la emocionalidad. La frase "¿cómo se siente?", reiterada por Milgram en el debriefing de su experimento conduciría a una pretendida unificación del sujeto barrado lacaniano...

The Stanley Milgram experiment can be thought of as a setting for psychologization. An intersubjective situation is staged with the objective of individualizing and psychologizing it. As of this proposition, the work presents a series of objections based on the premise that for Jacques Lacan psychology is a powerful tool of "technocratic exploitation". The Milgram experience would illustrate this premise, as his ingenious experimental design leads to the coercive imposition of emotional discourse. The phrase "how do you feel?" repeatedly used by Milgram in the debriefing of his experiment, would lead to the expected unification of the Lacanian 'barred subject'

Stanley Milgram y Le Jeu de la Mort. Obediencia y lógica mediática / Stanley Milgram and Le Jeu de la Mort. Obedience and media logic

A 50 años de su primera realización en 1963, las manifestaciones del experimento de Stanley Milgram en la cultura popular dan cuenta de su vigencia a la vez que introducen, con su narrativa, la interpelación ética. Desde la recreación teatralizada en el film "l.. como lcaro", hasta la reciente y espectacular réplica de "El juego de la muerte" realizada por la televisión francesa en 2009, la experiencia aparece desprovista de su rigurosidad de laboratorio para desplegarse en el plano social. ¿Podremos hallar en esta suerte de multiplicación dramático-audiovisual nuevas claves para desentrañar el misterio de la obediencia?

50 years have past since Stanley Milgram conducted his experiment in 1963. The manifestations of Stanley Milgram's experiment in popular culture account for its validity, while introducing through its narrative, an ethical appeal. From theatrical recreation in the film "I... comme Icare", to the recent and spectacular replica of "Le Jeu de la mort" on French television in 2009, the experiment appears, without its laboratory rigor, deployed in the social sphere. Can we find in this sort of visual-dramatic multiplication new keys to unravel the mystery of obedience?

Milgram con Freud y Lacan / Milgram with Freud and Lacan

¿Se pueden encontrar fundamentos psicoanalíticos en los hallazgos de Stanley Milgram? El propio autor del experimento relativizaba tal filiación. Sin embargo, una lectura atenta a la luz de un artículo de Fabián Schejtman permite dos líneas posibles de articulación. La primera, a partir de las tesis del estadio del espejo y la formulación del llamado esquema L (Lacan, 1936, 1949). La segunda, a partir del artículo de Sigmund Freud “Psicología de las masas y análisis del yo” (1921). Tal como lo propone Schejtman (2013), ambas líneas convergen en una idea común sobre la formación del yo-masa, escenario que sostenemos está presente en la matriz del experimento de Milgram

Can we find psychoanalitic fundaments based on the findings of Stanley Milgram? The author relativized such affiliation for his experiment. However, a careful reading in the light of an article by Fabian Schejtman permits two possible lines of articulation. The first is based on the thesis of the mirror stage and the formulation of the L-Scheme (Lacan, 1936, 1949). The second is based the article by Sigmund Freud, "Group psychology and the analysis of the ego" (1921). As proposed Schejtman (2013), both lines converge at a common understanding on the formation of self-mass, a scenario present in the matrix of the Milgram experiment

El experimento de Stanley Milgram: cuestiones éticas y metodológicas / Stanley Milgram's experiment: ethical and methodological issues

Una de las consecuencias del experimento de Stanley Milgram fue la reconsideración de premisas éticas para el uso de consignas engañosas en la investigación psicológica. Para presentar esta espinosa cuestión, se resumen las cuestiones metodológicas del experimento de Milgram a través de cuatro versiones: el diseño original de su creador, la recreación cinematográfica de Henri Verneuil en su film I… como Icaro (1979), la recreación del conocido mentalista inglés Derren Brown para la televisión británica (2006), y la réplica de Jerry Burger con su original y controvertida “solución” de los 150 voltios (2009). A partir de ello, se explicitan las modernas normativas en materia de uso de consignas engañosas en la investigación, tal como aparecen explicitadas en el código de la American Psychological Association, (APA, 2003)

One consequence of the Stanley Milgram experiment was a reconsideration of the ethical premises for the use of deception in psychological research. This article summarizes methodological issues of the Milgram experiment in four versions: the original design of its creator (1963), the recreation made by Henri Verneuil in his film I ... like Icarus (1979), the reconstruction by the English mentalist Derren Brown for British television (2006), and the replication of Jerry Burger with its original and controversial "solution" of the 150 volts (2009). From this, modern explicit regulations on the use of deception in research are developed, as is explicit in the code of the American Psychological Association (APA, 2003)