Milgram's experiment and subsequent research identified four key reasons for obedience: gradual commitment makes it difficult to disobey small requests; people obey legitimate authorities due to societal hierarchies; individuals can deny responsibility by becoming agents of an external authority through an agentic shift; and dehumanizing victims makes inflicting harm easier by distancing oneself from the individual.

1. Explanations of why people obey
Why did participants
obey in Milgram’s
experiment?

2. Four reasons why individuals obey
authority figures
1. Gradual Commitment
2. Legitimate Authority
3. Agentic Shift
4. Dehumanisation

3. Gradual commitment
Participants become locked
into obedience in small steps ‘Foot in the door’
technique
Once you have made some sort
of commitment it’s hard to go
back on it.
Real life
example?

4. What techniques did you use?
‘Take it for a test ‘Why don’t you sit
drive, see how it in the car and see
feels’ if you like it?’
‘Can I just take
some details so that
‘Imagine driving
we can enter you
home in your new into the system?’
car today’

5. Gradual Commitment A02
P – Evidence to support the gradual commitment
explanation of obedience comes from Milgram’s
experiment
E – For example, the participant was required to
administer shocks starting from 15v and increasing in
15v increments (each action was small making it
harder to back out)
E – This is a strength because Milgram’s research
demonstrates that small level obedience and
increasing in small stages make it very difficult for the
participant to disobey

6. Legitimate Authority
The amount of social power
held by the person who gives Society is ordered
the instruction in a hierarchical
way
From early childhood we are
taught that we should obey those
who have authority over us
Trust
We obey legitimate
authority because:
Punishment

7. Legitimate Authority A02
P – Evidence to support the legitimate authority
explanation of obedience comes from Milgram’s
experiment
E – For example, obedience rates were much higher
when the research took place at Yale with the
experimenter wearing a lab coat compared to the
variation in a run-down office block with the
experimenter in ‘normal’ clothes
E – This is a strength because it shows that the perceived
amount of authority a person holds will directly impact
the extent to which others will obey them.

8. Form your own hierarchy
• Think of who you obey in your life
• Place them in the hierarchy template
• Now try to decide if you obey because you
trust them or fear punishment

9. Agentic Shift
It’s easy to deny personal
responsibility when an order has Individuals
become ‘agents’
come from an authority figure for an external
authority
Obedience occurs because of a
conflict between internal and
external authority:
Internal Authority Own conscience
External Authority Authority Figure

10. Agentic Shift A02
P – Evidence to support the agentic shift explanation of
obedience comes from Milgram’s experiment
E – For example, many participants throughout the
research expressed concern as to the fact they
believed they’d be held responsible for any harm done
to the ‘learner’, to which the experimenter replied that
they’d take full responsibility
E – This supports the idea of the agentic shift as the
participants demonstrated that they would obey the
authority figure when they considered themselves to
be an agent/worker for an external authority

11. Dehumanisation
We are more likely to inflict
harm on someone if we can
Role of ‘buffers’
distance ourselves from the
- often seen in
victim war
Remove the persons
individuality (e.g. removing
face, name)
Dehumanisation makes it
easier to remove/avoid
moral responsibility

12. Dehumanisation A02
P – Evidence to support the dehumanisation explanation of
obedience comes from Milgram’s experiment
E – For example, in the original experiment Mr Wallace (the
‘learner’) was placed in a separate room to the participant,
allowing them to distance themselves from the ‘learner’ and
their pain, however, in the variations where the ‘learner’ was
brought to the same room as the participant obedience rates
dropped
E – This supports the idea of dehumanisation, whereby people are
more willing to inflict harm on others if they can remove
themselves from the individual as a ‘real person’ and rather
view them as a number

13. We know why people conform and
obey
- Now we need to work out...
Why do some people remain independent
and resist conformity and obedience?
In pairs/threes discuss this and write some
answers down on the post-it provided