Thomas Blass

Understanding behavior in the milgram obedience experiment : the role of personality, situations, and their interactions

Among the far-reaching implications that have been drawn from Milgrams obedience research is that situations powerfully override personal dispositions as determinants of social behavior. A focused review of the relevant research on the Milgram paradigm reveals that the evidence on situational determinants of obedience is less clear than is generally recognized; contrary to the commonly held view, personality measures can predict obedience; another kind of dispositional variable, enduring beliefs, is also implicated in the obedience process and approaches suggested by interactionist perspectives can provide some integration of the literature. The article concludes with a discussion of the broader inferences about obedience and social behavior called for by this review and the enduring significance of Milgrams obedience research

From New Haven to Santa Clara: A Historical Perspective on the Milgram Obedience Experiments.

This article traces the history of obedience experiments that have used the Milgram paradigm. It begins with Stanley Milgrams graduate education, showing how some aspects of that experience laid the groundwork for the obedience experiments. It then identifies three factors that led Milgram to study obedience. The underlying principles or messages that Milgram thought could be extracted from his experiments are then presented, and the evidence in support of them is assessed. Jerry M. Burgersrecent replication of Milgrams work--its place in the history of obedience research and its contribution to furthering the understanding of destructive obedience--is then examined.

The Social Psychology of Stanley Milgram

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the love-hate relationship that American psychology shares with Stanley Milgram. Social psychologists will invariably invoke the results of obedience experiments whenever needed to affirm the field that reveals something about social behavior that is not predictable from common sense. Milgram was equally at home publishing in magazines as in journals, which made him an effective disseminator of psychological information to the public. Despite the lack of attention to Milgram in most writings on the history of social psychology, he can readily be placed in a historical context. His phenomenon-centered approach represents a continuation, through Asch, of the Gestalt tradition. At the same time, his boundless confidence in the possibility of studying a wide range of social phenomena scientifically makes him supremely Lewinian. Milgram sensitized to the hidden workings of the social world. He showed the difficulty people often have of bridging the gap between intentions and actions. Even moral principles are not invariably translated into behavior but can have their potential power overridden by momentary situational pressures. Despite the pessimism occasioned by the obedience findings, it is remarkable that Milgram was able to maintain a positive, hopeful view of human potential.

Body movement and verbal encoding in the congenitally blind.

The purpose of the study was to examine the prevalence of object- and body-focused hand movements of the congenitally blind individuals engaged in an encoding task and to determine the relation of these movements to verbal performance. Ten Ss participated in a 5-min. videotaped monologue. The video portion was coded for hand movements using Freedmans categories of analysis. The audio portion was scored for grammatical complexity according to a system developed by Steingart and Freedman. It was found that: (1) Blind Ss engaged only in body-focused movements; object-focused movements were almost completely absent. (2) Blind Ss displayed significantly greater amounts of body-focused (primarily finger-to-hand) movements than a group of sighted Ss observed in a previous study. (3) There was a correlation of .51 between finger-to-hand movements and verbal fluency and a correlation of –.53 between body-touching and verbal fluency. (4) Ss with a prevalence of finger-to-hand movements showed significantly greater language skill at encoding complex sentences which portray descriptions of patterned, interrelationships among experiences, while Ss with a predominance of continuous body touching gave a less skillful language product in this regard. The findings indicate the central role of motor activity in ongoing thought construction. They also indicate that for the blind, finger-to-hand motions contribute to the evocation of sensory experiences as a necessary pre-condition for linguistic representation.

A psycholinguistic comparison of speech, dictation and writing.

Eighteen subjects responded to questions in an interview-like situation in which response modes (speaking, dictation, and writing) and question topics (personal v. impersonal) were systematically varied. Ten verbal indices consisting of extra-linguistic, syntactical, and content measures were the dependent variables. The speaking condition, in contrast to writing, yielded significantly faster Reaction Times and Production Rates, greater verbal Productivity, higher Silence Quotients, and lower Passive Verb Ratios, with dictation yielding intermediate scores on all the variables with the exception of Silence Quotient. The Ah Ratio was higher in dictation than in writing while the reverse was true for Non-Ah Ratio. Impersonal questions, in contrast to personal ones, evoked responses characterized by greater Productivity, faster Reaction Times, lower Silence Quotients and Non-Ah Ratios, higher Ah Ratios, longer and more superficial sentences. The encoding condition effects were interpreted as supporting the view that mode of communication influences the structure of the relations between interactants in a dyad. The topical effects supported the hypothesis of a greater reluctance to divulge personal rather than impersonal information, especially to a stranger.

RIGHT-WING AUTHORITARIANISM AND ROLE AS PREDICTORS OF ATTRIBUTIONS ABOUT OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY

Abstract Subjects saw a short 12-min version of the documentary, Obedience, showing a participant continuing to 180 V. The more authoritarian the viewer, the less the amount of responsibility he or she attributed to the teacher-subject for punishing the learner. Overall, viewers allocated the greatest amount of responsibility to the experimenter, less to the teacher-subject, and least to the learner.

The Effect of Perceived Consensus and Implied Threat upon Responses to Mail Surveys

Summary The role of two factors in increasing responsiveness of psychologists to mailed surveys—perceived normativeness of responding and implied threat of a follow-up approach—were studied in a factorial design. The 468 nonresponders to the initial mailing of a questionnaire were randomly assigned to one of four follow-up conditions generated by the independent variables: Consensus-Threat, Consensus-No Threat, No Consensus-Threat, and No Consensus-No Threat. There were no significant effects on frequency of response, but there was a significant Consensus x Threat interaction for speed of response. Ss in the three conditions containing a manipulation responded more quickly than those in the No Consensus-No Threat condition. These results suggest that either normative information regarding compliance of colleagues or implied threat of being approached again can speed responses to mail surveys.

A longitudinal study of the actor-observer attributional effect

Abstract This study examined the operation of the Jones-Nisbett actor-observer effect—i.e. the tendency for persons to see their actions as due to situational causes while observers of the same actions ascribe them to the actors personal dispositions—in the natural, non-laboratory environment of everyday interactions over an extended period of time. Subjects were asked to provide trait descriptions of themselves and a close acquiantance over a 3 1 2 week period by choosing five adjectives each, for the self and the other person, from a large list comprised of 200 words which had been rated high on meaningfulness from Andersons (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9, 272–279, 1968) list of 555 words scaled for likeableness, on 4 days each week. We assumed that the use of a relatively homogeneous set of trait-adjectives would reflect a more dispositional,trait-like, attribution since it describes the person as relatively consistent over time and, presumably, situations. Conversely, the use of a more heterogeneous set of adjectives would represent attributions to the diversity of situations that the person would likely find himself or herself in over the duration of the study. We thus expected the actor-observer effect to manifest itself in greater trait variability in descriptions of the self than of an acquaintance. Neither a measure of evaluative consistency nor of descriptive consistency yielded greater variability in self-descriptions than in other-descriptions. Because individual differences in a tendency toward the actor-observer attributional effect was a salient feature of our findings, we explored a possible personality correlate of this tendency—self-esteem—and found that those who conformed more to the effect were lower in self-esteem than those conforming to it less. Also, on the measure of descriptive consistency, we found variability in descriptions of the self and of the other person to be positively correlated. The implications of our findings regarding the limiting conditions of the Jones-Nisbett effect were discussed.

Predicting behavior from the Piers-Harris Children's self-concept scale

Abstract To demonstrate a relationship between the Piers-Harris Childrens Self-Concept Scale (PHCSCS) and observable behavior, the PHCSCS scale scores of 52 high school students were related to three target behaviors thought to be reflective of a positive self-concept: verbal participation in a small group discussion, nonverbally-expressed self-confidence, and participation in extra-curricular activities. The nonverbal self-confidence measure was positively associated with the PHCSCS, as was a composite measure of the three target behaviors. Private Self-Consciousness did not moderate any of the scale-behavior relationships.

Walking Under a Ladder: A Field Experiment on Superstitious Behavior

Superstitions affect all of us to varying degrees. Pedestrians will cross the street rather than encounter a black cat and bad luck. Bowlers and pitchers often display stereotyped behaviors before throwing the ball in order to bring good luck. Even nonbelievers cannot avoid superstitions. Just try to find a thirteenth floor in many a skyscraper. In spite of the prevalence of superstitious behavior in our society, little systematic work has been done on superstitious behavior in humans. Although there are some early correlational studies attempting to relate superstitiousness to intelligence (Powers, 1931) and to age and sex (Maller & Lundeen, 1933), experimental investigations of superstitious behaviors are lacking. The present study attempted to fill this gap by demonstrating that a model can influence a very common type of superstitious behavior, not walking under a ladder. Specifically, our primary hypothesis was that a person would be more likely to walk under a ladder after he observed a model walking under the ladder than when no model preceded him. Our hypothesis on the effects of a model was suggested by the various studies demonstrating the influence of a model in situations in which a norm is available to guide an individual in choosing between behavioral alternatives. For example, Bryan and Test (1967) found that the presence of a model increased the likelihood of helping on the part of observers. Lefkowitz, Blake, and Mouton (1955) found that pedestrian violations of a traffic signal at an intersection were significantly more likely to occur if a model was present who disobeyed the prohibition of walking against a traffic signal. It was believed that modeling would operate with regard to superstitious behavior that was normative in a manner similar to other normative behaviors, such as in the Lefkowitz, Blake, and Mouton study above. Our second prediction was that a model would have a differential effect on ladder avoidance only when not walking under the ladder was illogical or superstitious; i.e., when it is not in use. The model, however, was not expected to have a differential effect when there was