peers even though they have no direct authority over us. Going along with the crowd, whether that means attending a basket- ball game, studying abroad, or going to a party all because your friends do, is a form of conformity. Obedience, on the other hand, is a vertical form of social control that involves doing what a person in a posi- tion of authority over you says you should. In this form of social control, the social status D'Costock/lpiter Images RF of a person whose authority we respect, whether as a teacher, religious leader, or coach, gives them power over us. We Milgram set up a scenario in which a volunteer, recruited are inclined to do what they ask because we trust them from the local community, was told that researchers were and defer to their presumed knowledge and wisdom. investigating the effects of pun obedience Dong what a perso Social psychologist Stanley Milgrani (1963, 1974) ishment on learning. The vol- ne son of authority over yo wondered how far people would go when asked to do unteer was then brought into a Says you should something by a trusted authority figure. He was motivated lah setting and asked to serve as to do so, in part, because he wanted to better understand a teacher" who would ask questions of a "learner." If the the involvement of the German people in the murder of learner got the question wrong. the teacher was instructed 6 million Jews and millions of others during World War by a scientist, dressed in a lab coat, to administer an electric II. One of the rationalizations given after the war was that shock to the learner. For each additional question the learner they were just following orders." Milgram conceived of a got wrong, the teacher was instructed to increase the shock's test to demonstrate people's willingness to obey voltage. Unbeknownst to the volunteer, however, no actual shock was administered. The real purpose of the study was to see how far the teacher/ volunteer would go before refusing to obey the scientist In a prearranged script, the learner delib erately gave incorrect answers and pre- tended to be in pain when shocked." For example, al 150 volts the learner would cry out, "Get me out of here!" At 270 volts the learner would screant in agony. When the shock reached 350 volts, the learner would fall silent. If the teacher wanted to stop the experiment, the experimenter would insist that the teacher continue, using such state ments as "The experiment requires that you continue" and "You have no other choice you must go on." Milgran repeated this experiment numerous times, altering 23 dif ferent experimental conditions, such as the The zombie apoca ypse has become a pop cu cure stele, gender of the scientist, the number of scien- Examples include George Romero's Ling Deodfns, Max tists, and the presence of the scientist in the Brooks's World War Zocok and film and The Working Deco room, to see what et focts they might have. In graphic move and TV series. Such accounts often say more about Experiment 5, the variation for which Mil- humans and the breakdown of social order than they do not gram is best known. 65 percent of the volun zombes. In the event of a zombie apocalypse, now cu ckly do you teers continued all the way up to the 450-volt think soc al order would break down? What factors might in mize maximum (Blass 1999; Haslanı, Loughnan, socio chaos? What steps should becole take? and Perry 2014; Milgram 1974a). Researchers since Milgram have con Photo: Everett Collection ducted similar demonstrations seeking POPSOC Chapter 6 / Deviance 123 -SOCTHINK According to the American Sociological Asso- clation Code of Ethics, researchers must pro rect subjects from personal harm." To what extent might Milgram's subjects have experi- enced emotional harm? How and why might a researcher seek to justify such a risk? without fully appreciating what we are doing. Under simi- lar circumstances, otherwise normal people can and do treat one another inhumanely, as demonstrated by the revealing photos taken at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 which showed U.S. military guards humiliating, if not tor- turing, traqi prisoners (Hayden 2004: Zimbardo 2007). Reflecting on his research, Milgram wrote, "It may be that we are puppets puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation" (1974b: 568). We do not make choices in a vacuum and sociology enables us to better recognize the social forces that shape our actions so that we can make more informed choices -SOC HINK Do you think a person's background factors would influence how far ne or she would go in Milgram's experiment? How might age, gender, religion, or education make a difference? to replicate his findings and have produced comparable results. The average obedience rate for 17 similar stud- ies was 65 percent, though rates for these studies varied significantly from 28 o 91 percent (Blass 1999). Due to the potentially harmful psychological side effects on the volunteers, studies such as these ceased. In a more recent attempt, social psychologist Jerry Burger (2009) attempted to minimize the ethical concerns by, among other things, assuring volum Informal social control Social teers they could stop at any concrete scared cu cesually Dy dry papierojgr such time, guaranteeing they could anses tegutses and keep the money they were idcale paid for volunteering even if they stopped, and ending the experiment immediately after the 150-volt level when the learner" asked for the experiment to stop, at which point the true nature of the experiment was revealed and the learner was shown to be unharmed. Burger found that 65 percent of his subjects continued to administer what they thought were shocks until the end. Milgram concluded that we are willing to do things we would otherwise not do, including inflicting pain, when a person in a position of authority tells us to do so. He pointed out that, in modern society, we are accustomed to submitting to impersonal authority figures whose status is indicated by a title (pro- fessor, president, doc- tor) or by a uniform (police officer, army Lieutenant, scientist). Because we deler to authority, we shift responsi- bility for our behavior to the authority figure INFORMAL AND FORMAL SOCIAL CONTROL In addition to being horizontal and vertical, social control can be formal and informal. As the term implies, people use informal social control casttally to enforce norms. Examples include smiles, laughter, a raised eyebrow and ridicule. We seek to read such cues in new situations such as a first date or a job interview so that we might adjust our behavior accordingly. A participant in the Mgram experiment Photo on the im COCOENCE 1968 by Ara Migrem resed993.0 Alexar de Mar Orte by.sermission Aleea Migu
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