Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Bocchiaro et al (2012) - Responses to
people in authority
- Background
- Milgram (1974) found that
people have strong
inclinations to obey
legitimate authority,
irresponsive of their
beliefs, feelings or
intentions
- In Milgram's study, 65% of participants inflicted
what they thought were lethal shocks to a
mild-mannered man, just because the man in the
'grey lab coat' told them to - an authority figure
- This study uses Milgram's idea of getting an
authority figure to request immoral actions of
participants
- But the study goes beyond, as it provides the
participants with the option of taking personal
action against an evil system - whistleblowing
- Whistleblowing - when someone reports wrong
doing, usually used in the workplace or exposing
negative behaviour in college
- The study was also aimed to replicate Milgram's
findings of a wide gap between peoples predictions of
their own and others degree of obedience and
disobedience, when contrasted with the actual
behavioural outcomes of the experiment
- The researchers' interest in understanding the person
(individual) as well as the social (situational) nature of variations
in obedience and disobedience led them to collect a variety of
personality and values information from their participants
- Theories on which the
study is based
- Aims
- To see how many people would comply with an
unethical request and how may people would
respond by whistleblowing to a higher authority
- To compare actual rates of disobedience and
whistleblowing and estimated rates
- To investigate the role of dispositional factors in
obedience, disobedience and whistleblowing
- Hypothesese
- There would be a higher percentage
of obedience than in Milgram as
people find it easier to inflict
psychological harm rather than
physical pain
- There would be a lower level of whistle
blowing than disobedience because it
involves a potential direct confrontation of
the defiant person in authority
- Individual (dispositional) factors will have a
weak relationship with the decision to obey,
disobey and openly defy authority
- When people are asked to
predict their behaviour, a
substantial amount of people
would overestimate the
tendency to disobey and blow
the whistle
- Similar to Milgram
participants
underestimated the
degree of disobedience
that would be shown
- Contemporary study
- "Scenario study"
- No independent
variable
- Data was
gathered on the
number of
participants who
obeyed by
writing a
statement in
support of the
sensory
deprivation
study
- Snapshot study
- Entire session
lasted
40minutes per
participant
- Sample Details
- 149 Undergrad
Students
- 96 women, 53 Men
- Mean age - 20.8
- A total of 11
participants were
removed from the initial
160 - for suspiciousness
of the aim
- So that demand
characteristics did not
affect the validity of the
data collected
- Self-Selection
- Participants
were recruited
by flyers posted
in the campus
cafeteria of the
VU University at
Amsterdam
- They took part in exchange for
either 7 Euro's or course credit
- To control the conditions,
so the procedure was
standardised - to give
legitimacy and authenticity
to the cover story