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

ABSTRACT

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Milgram paradigm
• obedience
• physical proximity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The datasets used and analyzed during the current study are freely available - https://osf.io/hmk96

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/hmk96

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Centre for Science, Poland [2018/29/B/HS6/00543].

Notes on contributors

Dariusz Dolinski

Dariusz Dolinski - is a Full Professor of Psychology at the SWPS University, Faculty of Psychology in Wroclaw. He teaches social psychology and the psychology of marketing. He has published 12 books (including Techniques of Social Influence. The Psychology of Gaining Compliance) and more than 180 articles.

Tomasz Grzyb

Tomasz Grzyb - Associate Professor at the SWPS University, Faculty of Psychology in Wroclaw. He is the President of the Polish Social Psychological Society and Editor-in-Chief of the Polish Psychological Bulletin.