In a series of studies inspired by Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments, researchers explored how the perceived status of scientific disciplines influences people’s willingness to obey authority. They discovered that participants were more likely to follow instructions believed to advance “hard” sciences like neuroscience compared to “soft” sciences like social science. The research, published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, sheds light on the role of perceptions of science in shaping obedience.
“I think most of us have been in positions, whether at work or school, where we’ve felt pressure to do something, or go along with something, that we’re not comfortable with,” said study author Megan Birney, a senior lecturer at Staffordshire University and the author of “Self & Identity: The Basics”
“Our research shows that going along with others’ requests to do something is not blind or without thought, but rather, a process of identity. For me, it’s important that we gain a deeper understanding of this so that we can hold ourselves, as well as others, accountable.”
Background: The Psychology of Obedience to Authority
In the 1960s, psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments that have since become famous for their striking insights into the power of authority over individual behavior. These experiments, known as the “Obedience to Authority” studies, were designed to understand how far individuals would go in obeying an authority figure, especially when their actions conflicted with their personal conscience and ethical beliefs.
In these experiments, participants were assigned the role of a ‘Teacher’ and were instructed to administer electric shocks to another participant, the ‘Learner’, every time the Learner made an error on a memory task. Unbeknownst to the Teacher, the Learner was actually an actor, and no real shocks were given. As the experiment progressed, the shocks increased in intensity, eventually reaching levels labeled as dangerous.
The pivotal finding of Milgram’s study was that a significant majority of the Teachers, despite showing signs of stress and discomfort, continued to administer shocks up to the highest levels, purely because they were urged to do so by the experiment’s authority figure, the Experimenter.
These experiments shed light on the disturbing extent to which individuals might conform to authority, even when it involves harming others, a revelation that was particularly poignant in the context of the atrocities committed during World War II. Milgram’s work has since become a cornerstone in the study of social psychology, illustrating the often underestimated power of authority figures in shaping individual behavior.
Milgram initially concluded that people enter an “agentic state” under authority, losing awareness of the consequences of their actions. However, this explanation has been increasingly challenged. Recent interpretations, such as the “engaged followership” account, suggest that participants’ actions in Milgram’s experiments were more about their identification with the scientific project and less about blind obedience to authority.
The researchers’ current study builds on this alternative interpretation. They aimed to understand how the perception of a scientific endeavor as “prototypical” (or representative of ideal science) influences participants’ willingness to follow experimental instructions Specifically, they sought to understand if the distinction between so-called “hard” sciences and “soft” sciences could affect people’s obedience to scientific authority. They conducted a series of four studies.
Study 1: Initial Test of Neuroscience vs. Social Science
In the first study, researchers sought to understand how the perceived prototypicality of different scientific disciplines might influence participants’ obedience. They recruited 198 postgraduate students from various disciplines and designed an online task modeled after Milgram’s obedience experiments. However, instead of administering electric shocks, participants were asked to assign negative descriptors to a range of social groups. The experiment was framed in two different contexts: as advancing neuroscience, considered a ‘hard’ science, and as advancing social science, often perceived as a ‘soft’ science.
The results showed that participants who believed they were contributing to neuroscience were more willing to follow through with the task, completing more trials than those in the social science condition. This suggested that the perception of neuroscience as a more prototypical, or ‘harder’, science could lead to greater obedience, possibly due to increased trust in the discipline.
Study 2: Broadening the Participant Pool
Building on the findings from Study 1, the researchers in Study 2 aimed to see if the same effects would be observed in a more diverse sample. They recruited 396 individuals from the general population through Prolific, an online platform. Similar to the first study, participants were divided into three groups: those advancing neuroscience, those advancing social science, and a control group with no specific scientific discipline mentioned.
The results of Study 2 were mostly consistent with Study 1, though the effects were less pronounced. Participants in the neuroscience condition showed a slightly higher tendency to complete the task than those in the social science condition. However, the difference was not as stark as in the first study, indicating that the effect of scientific discipline on obedience might be more subtle among a general population than among postgraduate students.
Study 3: Context and the COVID-19 Pandemic
In Study 3, the researchers aimed to replicate their previous findings with a new twist. Conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study involved 382 participants from the general population. The pandemic’s context, which highlighted the importance of social science, provided a unique backdrop for this research. The study replicated the methodology of the previous experiments but added questions about the participants’ experience with the task.
Surprisingly, Study 3 did not find significant differences in obedience between the neuroscience and social science conditions. This indicated that the specific context and the heightened profile of social science during the pandemic might have influenced participants’ perceptions, making them as likely to obey instructions in a social science context as in a neuroscience one.
Study 4: Exploring Perceptions without Manipulation
The fourth study shifted focus from direct manipulation of scientific discipline to exploring participants’ perceptions about the study and the experimenters. The research involved 306 participants, and, like its predecessors, was conducted online. Participants completed the same task but were not told it was advancing a particular field of science. After the task, they answered questions about their perceptions of the study’s and the experimenter’s prototypicality of science, along with their feelings about participation.
The results from Study 4 revealed that perceptions of the study being prototypical of science were linked to greater trust in researchers, a sense of the study’s worthiness, happiness about participation, and less dislike for the task. These factors, in turn, correlated with greater followership or a higher likelihood of completing the task. Interestingly, these effects were more consistently associated with perceptions of the study’s prototypicality than with perceptions of the experimenter’s prototypicality.
Overall Insights
These studies collectively suggest that the perceived prototypicality of scientific disciplines can influence obedience to scientific authority. However, this effect is nuanced and can be influenced by the context, as shown during the COVID-19 pandemic in Study 3.
“There are often competing voices in our head about what we should do when we’re in tricky situations,” Birney told PsyPost. “I think the takeaway from this is that it is worth stopping to reflect on our actions – not just our behaviours, but the pull we felt to act as we’ve done.”
Limitations and Future Research
While these studies provide valuable insights into the influence of obedience to authority, they are not without limitations. The online nature of the tasks may not fully capture the dynamics of in-person authority. Additionally, the context of the COVID-19 pandemic during the third study highlighted how external factors could influence perceptions of scientific disciplines. Future research could delve deeper into these nuances, exploring how different attributes of scientific disciplines influence obedience and the role of personal identification with science in this process.
The study, “Engaged followership and toxic science: Exploring the effect of prototypicality on willingness to follow harmful experimental instructions“, was authored by Megan E. Birney, Stephen D. Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, Niklas K. Steffens, and Fergus G. Neville.
