Beyond obedience: reanalysis of Milgrams' research
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24310/espsiescpsi.v8i1.13222Keywords:
Authority, Holocaust, Milgram, ObedienceAbstract
Milgram’s obedience to authority study is considered one of the most important studies in social psychology. Its impact has gradually spread to social psychology, other branches of psychology, and other social sciences. This article analyses the reciprocal influence of Milgram’s studies and Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil. It also offers a critical analysis of Milgram’s theoretical model (agentic state) and Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil. It is suggested that there is no empirical evidence of the existence of an agentic state or a relationship between this state and the levels of obedience achieved in Milgram’s experiments. Furthermore, recent studies on the Holocaust do not confirm that the criminal actions of the Nazi leaders were acts of due obedience. Theoretical models, such the one based on the perspective of social identity, are needed to explain the results obtained in Milgram’s experiments.
Downloads
Metrics
References
Adorno, T., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. y Sanford, N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. Nueva York: Harper.
Álvaro, J. L. y Garrido, A. (2003). Psicología social. Perspectivas psicológicas y sociológicas. Madrid: McGraw Hill.
Arendt, H. (1951). Origins of totalitarianism. San Diego, CA: Harvest.
Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. Nueva York: Penguin.
Asch, S. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 70, 1-70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0093718
Baumrind, D. (1964). Some thoughts on the ethics of research: After reading Milgram’s “Behavioral Study of Obedience”. American Psychologist, 19, 421-423. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0040128
Benjamin, L. y Simpson, J. (2009). The power of situation. The impact of Milgram´s obedience studies on personality and social psychology. American Psychologist, 64, 12-19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0014077
Blass, T. (1991). Understanding behaviour in the Milgram obedience experiment: The rol of personality, situations, and their interactions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 398-413. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.60.3.398
Blass, T. (1999). The Milgram paradigm after 35 years: Some things we now know about obedience to authority. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29, 955-978. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1999.tb00134.x
Blass, T. (2004). The man who shocked the world: The life and legacy of Stanley Milgram. Nueva York: Basic Books.
Brannigan, A. (2004). The rise and the fall of social psycho-logy: The use and misuse of the experimental method. New Jersey: Aldine Transaction.
Burger, J. (2009). Replicating Milgram. Would people still obey today? American Psychologist, 64, 1-11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0010932
Canto, J. M. (1994). Psicología social e influencia. Málaga: Aljibe.
Cesarani, D. (2004). Eichmann: His life and crimes. Londres: Heinemann.
Darley, J. (1992). Social organization for the production of evil. Psychology Inquiry, 3, 199-218. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli0302_28
Gibson, S. (2014). Discourse, defiance, and rationality: “Knowledge work” in the “obedience” experiments. Journal of Social Issues, 70, 424-438. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/josi.12069
Haney, C., Banks, C. y Zimbardo, P. (1973). A study of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison. En E. Aronson (Ed.), Readings about the social animal (pp. 52-67). San Francisco, CA: Freeman.
Haslam, S. y Reicher, S. (2011). Beyond conformity. Revisiting classic studies and exploring the dynamics of resistance. En J. Jetten y M. Hornsey. Rebels in groups: dissent, deviance, difference and defiance (pp. 324-344). Londres: Wiley-Blackwell.
Haslam, S., Reicher, S. y Birney, M. (2014). Nothing by mere authority: evidence that in an experimental analogue of the Milgram paradigm participants are motivated not by orders but by appeals to science. Journal of Social Issues, 70, 473-488. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/josi.12072
Le Bon, G. (1895). Psychologie des foules. Félix Alcan: París.
Lunt, P. (2009). Stanley Milgram. Understanding obedience and its implications. Nueva York: Palgrave MacMillan
Masserman, J. (1968). Debatable conclusions. Internatio-nal Journal of Psychiatry, 6, 261-281.
Meeus, W. y Raaijmakers, Q. (1986). Administrative obe-dience: Carrying out orders to use psychological-administrative violence. European Journal of Social Psychology, 16, 311-324. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2420160402
Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 371-378. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0040525
Milgram, S. (1965a). Some conditions of obedience and disobedience to authority. Humans Relations, 18, 57-76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/001872676501800105
Milgram, S. (1965b). Liberating effects of group pressure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1, 127-134. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0021650
Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to Authority: An experimental view. Nueva York: Harper and Row.
Miller, A. (1986). The obedience experiments: A case study of controversy in social science. Nueva York: Praeger.
Mischel, W. (1968). Personality and assessment. Nueva York: Wiley.
Moscovici, S. (1981). Psicología de las minorías activas. Madrid: Morata.
Orne, M. y Holland, C. (1968). On the ecological validity of laboratory deceptions. International Journal of Psychiatry, 6, 282-293.
Packer, D. J. (2008). Identifying systematic disobedience in Milgram’s obedience experiments: A meta-analytic review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 301-304. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6924.2008.00080.x
Parker, I. (2000). Obedience. Granta, 71, 99-124.
Reicher, S. y Haslam, S. (2006). Rethinking the psycho-logy of tyranny: The BBC prison study. British Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 1-40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1348/014466605X48998
Reicher, S. y Haslam, S. (2011). After shock? Towards a social identity explanation of the Milgram ‘obedience’ studies. British Journal of Social Psychology, 50, 163-169. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8309.2010.02015.x
Reicher, S. y Haslam, S. (2012). Obedience. Revisiting Milgram’s shock experiments. En J. Smith y S. Haslam (Eds.), Social Psychology. Revisiting the classic studies (pp. 106-125). Londres: Sage.
Reicher, S., Haslam, S. y Miller, A. G. (2014). What makes a person a pertetrator? The intellectual, moral, and methodological arguments for revisiting Milgram´s research on the influence of authority. Journal of Social Issues, 70, 393-409. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/josi.12067
Reicher, S., Haslam, S. y Rath, R. (2008). Making a virtue of evil: A five-step social identity model of the development of collective hate. Social and Personality Psychology Com-pass, 2/3, 1313-1344. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.00113.x
Reicher, S., Haslam, S. y Smith, J. (2012). Working towards the experimenter: reconceptualizing obedience within the Milgram paradigm as identification-based followership. Perspectives on Psychology Science, 7, 315-324. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1745691612448482
Rochat, F. y Midigliani, A. (1995). The ordinary quality of resistance: From Milgram’s laboratory to the village of Le Chambon. Journal of Social Issues, 51, 195-210. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1995.tb01341.x
Rochat, F. y Blass, T. (2014). Milgram´s unpublished obedience variation and its historical relevance. Journal of Social Issues, 70, 456-472. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/josi.12071
Ross, L. D. (1988). Situationist perspectives on the obedience experiments. Contemporary Psychology, 33, 101-104.
Russell, N. J. (2011). Milgram’s obedience to authority experiments: Origins and early evolution. British Journal of Social Psychology, 50, 140-162. http://dx.doi.org/10.1348/014466610X492205
Russell, N. J. (2014). The emergence of Milgram`s bureaucratic machine. Journal of Social Issues, 70, 409-423. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/josi.12068
Sherif, M. (1936). The psychology of social norms. Nueva York: Harper & Row.
Sherif, M. y Sherif, C. (1953). Groups in harmony and tension. Nueva York: Harper & Row.
Slater, M., Antley, A., Davison, A., Swapp, D., Guger, C., Barker, C., Pistrang, N. y Sanchez-Vives, M. V. (2006). A virtual reprise of the Stanley Milgram obedience experiments. PloS ONE, 1: e39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/jour-nal.pone.0000039
Turner, J. C. (1991). Social influence. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Turner, J.C., Hogg, M. A., Oakes, P. J., Reicher, S. y Wetherell, M. S. (1987). Rediscovering the social group. A self-categorization theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Wicker, A. (1969). Attitudes versus actions: The relationship between verbal and overt behavioural response in attitude objects. Journal of Social Issues, 25, 41-78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1969.tb00619.x
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
All contents published in Escritos de Psicología are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. All about this license is available in the following link: <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0>
Users can copy, use, redistribute, share and exhibit publicly as long as:
- The original source and authorship of the material are cited (Journal, Publisher and URL of the work).
- It is not used for comercial purposes.
- The existence of the license and its especifications are mentioned.
There are two sets of authors’ rights: moral and property rights. Moral rights are perpetual prerogatives, unrenounceable, not-transferable, unalienable, imprescriptible and inembargable. According to authors’ rights legislation, Escritos de Psicología recognizes and respects authors moral rights, as well as the ownership of property rights. The property rights are referred to the benefits that are gained by the use or the dissemination of works. Escritos de Psicología is published in an open access form and it is exclusively licenced by any means for doing or authorising distribution, dissemination, reproduction, , adaptation, translation or arrangement of works.
Authors are responsable for obtaining the necessary permission to use copyrighted images.
10.png)
ESCRITOS DE PSICOLOGÍA por 