We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
'Happy to have been of service': The Yale archive as a window into the engaged followership of participants in Milgram's 'obedience' experiments.
- Authors
Haslam, S. Alexander; Reicher, Stephen D.; Millard, Kathryn; McDonald, Rachel
- Abstract
This study examines the reactions of participants in Milgram's 'Obedience to Authority' studies to reorient both theoretical and ethical debate. Previous discussion of these reactions has focused on whether or not participants were distressed. We provide evidence that the most salient feature of participants' responses - and the feature most needing explanation - is not their lack of distress but their happiness at having participated. Drawing on material in Box 44 of Yale's Milgram archive we argue that this was a product of the experimenter's ability to convince participants that they were contributing to a progressive enterprise. Such evidence accords with an engaged followership model in which (1) willingness to perform unpleasant tasks is contingent upon identification with collective goals and (2) leaders cultivate identification with those goals by making them seem virtuous rather than vicious and thereby ameliorating the stress that achieving them entails. This analysis is inconsistent with Milgram's own agentic state model. Moreover, it suggests that the major ethical problem with his studies lies less in the stress that they generated for participants than in the ideologies that were promoted to ameliorate stress and justify harming others.
- Subjects
CONNECTICUT; QUESTIONNAIRES; PSYCHOLOGICAL stress; CONTROL (Psychology); AUTHORITY; CONFORMITY; GOAL (Psychology); HISTORICAL research; HOLOCAUST, 1939-1945; META-analysis; RESEARCH methodology; PROFESSIONAL ethics; APPLIED psychology; RESEARCH; RESEARCH funding; STUDENT attitudes; UNIVERSITIES &; colleges; PATIENT participation; SECONDARY analysis; HUMAN research subjects; RETROSPECTIVE studies; PSYCHOLOGY of human research subjects; PARTICIPANT-researcher relationships; HISTORY
- Publication
British Journal of Social Psychology, 2015, Vol 54, Issue 1, p55
- ISSN
0144-6665
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/bjso.12074