1. Area: Social Psychology
Theme: Responses to people in authority Classic study: Milgram (1963) Obedience Contemporary study: Bocchiaro et al. (2012) Experiment into disobedience towards unjust authority

2. Bocchiaro et al. (2012) Background
From Milgram’s (1963) we learned that people are highly obedient to authority figures, even when they know what they are being asked to do is unethical.
Bocchiaro noted Milgram focused on obedience, failing to tell us anything about disobedience
Due to the ethics which were introduced after Milgram’s study, it was not possible to replicate or extend on Milgram’s original study. Instead a new way was required

3. Bocchiaro et al. (2012) Background Bocchiaro looked at whistle-blowing
A whistle-blower is an individual or group of individuals who expose the unlawful or unethical activities or behaviours of a person, group of people, or organisation.
In order to blow the whistle on unethical behaviours, individuals must first disobey, which is an interesting behaviour itself, as the whistle-blower must reject authority in order to act inline with their internal values and attitudes. This may be quite difficult, as we saw in the Milgram (1963) study, people have a strong tendency to follow the orders of an authority figure.
Read the handout and see if you are a whistle-blower

4. Bocchiaro et al. (2012)
AIM
Main aim was to investigate rates of obedience, disobedience and whistleblowing in a situation where no physical violence was involved but where it was quite clear that the instructions were ethically wrong
Additional aims
To investigate the accuracy of people’s estimates of obedience, disobedience and whistle-blowing in this situation
To investigate the role of dispositional factors in obedience, disobedience and whistleblowing

5. Bocchiaro et al. (2012) Method Pilot studies are…
Eight pilot studies were carried out, involving a total of 92 ppts
These were carried out to ensure the procedure was credible and ethically acceptable to ppts
It was reported from ppts that procedure was believable and ethical
Participants
Undergraduate students from VU University of Amsterdam
92 individuals in pilot study in main study (96 f, 53m, 20.8 mean age)
Sample recruited by flyers posted in university café
In addition, 138 different ppts were surveyed about how they believed they would respond in experimental situation

6. Bocchiaro et al. (2012) Design and procedure
Carried out in lab conditions
Each ppt was paid 7 Euros or given course credits
Each ppt arrived alone and met by stern experimenter who informed them they were carrying out research on sensory deprivation
Experimenter tells ppt that in last study all ppts panicked and some asked for study to be stopped – which it had not been
Experimenter also tells ppt that they are waiting to have their ethical guidelines approved from university

7. Bocchiaro et al. (2012) Design and procedure
Ppt is given task to write statement convinving other students to take part in sensory deprivation procedure
They were told that they had to use at least two words from the choice of ‘exciting’, ‘incredible’, ‘great’, and ‘superb’.
Ppts were told they must not mention negative effects of sensory deprivation.
Ppts were also offered paid work in future
The ppt was left alone in room with computer where they were asked to write statement.
Also in the room was a mail box (to post letter) and ethic committee forms
If the ppts thought the study was unethical they could complete ethic committee form

8. Bocchiaro et al. (2012) Design and procedure
Obedience/disobedience was measured by whether ppts wrote statement or not
Whistleblowing was assessed by whether they completed an ethics form and mailed it back
After seven minutes, the experimenter returned and led ppt back to first room, where they were given a set of dispositional measures:
The HEXACO-PI-R personality test. This measures six traits: honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness(niceness), conscientiousness and openness to experience
The Decomposed Games measure of social values (benefit self or benefit all)
Religiosity was assessed by asking ppts about their religious affiliation, frequency of worship and extent of faith

9. Bocchiaro et al. (2012) Design and procedure
After this, students were informed of actual aim(s) of study and debriefed
Separately, 138 different ppts were asked to estimate likely obedience levels in the situation
They were provided with detailed description of the procedure and asked ‘what would you do?’ and ‘what would the average student at your university do?’

10. Bocchiaro et al. (2012)
Results

11. Bocchiaro et al. (2012) Conclusions
What are the five main conclusions?
Identify which aim(s) each of the conclusions relate to

12. Bocchiaro et al. (2012) Evaluation Research Method Qualitative data
Quantitative data
Ethical considerations
Validity
Reliability
Sampling Bias
Ethnocentrism
Practical Applications

13. Questions
1. Describe the sample used. [2] 2. Outline one limitation of this sample. [2] 3. Identify two findings from this study. [2] 4. In Bocchiaro et al.’s study on disobedience and whistleblowing, the majority obeyed in the experimental situation. Outline one situational factor that led to high levels of obedience in this study. [2]

14. How does Bocchiaro change our understanding of key theme: Responses to people in authority

15. What does the two studies tell us about…
Individual diversity Social diversity Cultural diversity
This area of research led to an understanding of terrible historical events such as the holocaust and how individuals may be led to behave in ways they would never predict they would. This has led to the idea that all individuals are susceptible; if they are asked by a figure in authority, to gradually carry out terrible acts they would previously have said were inconceivable. Bocchiaro et al found similar results and extended the evidence to include female behaviour along with male behaviour
Both pieces of research highlight the need for society to question authority further as obedience levels in both studies were seen to be high. The contemporary study, Bocchiaro et al, uses students so may be limited in its ability to explain how different groups in society may behave but does look at a different part of society to Milgram who studied volunteers with a range of occupations.
Bocchiaro furthered Milgram’s ethnocentric research and showed that obedience is high cross-culturally as well as the importance of considering individual explanations alongside situational ones. The contemporary study also showed that obedience was similar over time and research in this area suggests that people are inherently obedient.

16. How does Milgram relate to the key theme of Responses to people in authority? How does Bocchiaro relate to the key theme of Responses to people in authority?

17. How does Milgram link to social area?
Social approach because the results show how pressure from another person could lead people to administer potentially fatal electric shocks to another individual and how they could be led to do this in spite of their evident discomfort. Included because of the importance of its subject matter and because of the way in which it inspired so much other research in the area of obedience. Furthermore, Milgram emphasised situational rather than individual explanations

18. How does Bocchiaro et al. link to social area?
A study which sought to develop a new way to investigate obedience experimentally. Similar to Milgram in revealing high levels of obedience, but a good contrast in that this study was conducted in the Netherlands; as it also sought to investigate if there were any personality differences distinguishing those who were obedient, disobedient or prepared to be whistle-blowers, it challenges a purely social approach to explaining behaviour and does consider individual explanations.