Psycology 6

Essay

Contesting the ‘‘Nature’’ Of Conformity: What Milgram and Zimbardo’s Studies Really Show S. Alexander Haslam1*, Stephen D. Reicher2

1 School of Psychology, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Australia, 2 School of Psychology, University of St. Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland

Abstract: Understanding of the psychology of tyranny is dominat- ed by classic studies from the 1960s and 1970s: Milgram’s research on obedience to authority and Zim- bardo’s Stanford Prison Experi- ment. Supporting popular notions of the banality of evil, this research has been taken to show that people conform passively and un- thinkingly to both the instructions and the roles that authorities pro- vide, however malevolent these may be. Recently, though, this consensus has been challenged by empirical work informed by social identity theorizing. This suggests that individuals’ willingness to fol- low authorities is conditional on identification with the authority in question and an associated belief that the authority is right.

Introduction

If men make war in slavish obedience to

rules, they will fail.

Ulysses S. Grant [1]

Conformity is often criticized on

grounds of morality. Many, if not all, of

the greatest human atrocities have been

described as ‘‘crimes of obedience’’ [2].

However, as the victorious American Civil

War General and later President Grant

makes clear, conformity is equally prob-

lematic on grounds of efficacy. Success

requires leaders and followers who do not

adhere rigidly to a pre-determined script.

Rigidity cannot steel them for the chal-

lenges of their task or for the creativity of

their opponents.

Given these problems, it would seem

even more unfortunate if human beings

were somehow programmed for confor-

mity. Yet this is a view that has become

dominant over the last half-century. Its

influence can be traced to two landmark

empirical programs led by social psychol-

ogists in the 1960s and early 1970s:

Milgram’s Obedience to Authority re-

search and Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison

Experiment. These studies have not only

had influence in academic spheres. They

have spilled over into our general culture

and shaped popular understanding, such

that ‘‘everyone knows’’ that people inevita-

bly succumb to the demands of authority,

however immoral the consequences [3,4].

As Parker puts it, ‘‘the hopeless moral of the

[studies’] story is that resistance is futile’’

[5]. What is more, this work has shaped our

understanding not only of conformity but of

human nature more broadly [6].

Building on an established body of theo-

rizing in the social identity tradition—which

sees group-based influence as meaningful and

conditional [7,8]—we argue, however, that

these understandings are mistaken. Moreover,

we contend that evidence from the studies

themselves (as well as from subsequent

research) supports a very different analysis of

the psychology of conformity.

The Classic Studies: Conformity, Obedience, and the Banality Of Evil

In Milgram’s work [9,10] members of

the general public (predominantly men)

volunteered to take part in a scientific

study of memory. They found themselves

cast in the role of a ‘‘Teacher’’ with the

task of administering shocks of increasing

magnitude (from 15 V to 450 V in 15-V

increments) to another man (the ‘‘Learn-

er’’) every time he failed to recall the

correct word in a previously learned pair.

Unbeknown to the Teacher, the Learner

was Milgram’s confederate, and the shocks

were not real. Moreover, rather than

being interested in memory, Milgram

was actually interested in seeing how far

the men would go in carrying out the task.

To his—and everyone else’s [11]—shock,

the answer was ‘‘very far.’’ In what came

to be termed the ‘‘baseline’’ study [12] all

participants proved willing to administer

shocks of 300 V and 65% went all the way

to 450 V. This appeared to provide

compelling evidence that normal well-

adjusted men would be willing to kill a

complete stranger simply because they

were ordered to do so by an authority.

Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experi-

ment took these ideas further by exploring

the destructive behaviour of groups of men

over an extended period [13,14]. Students

were randomly assigned to be either

guards or prisoners within a mock prison

that had been constructed in the Stanford

Psychology Department. In contrast to

Milgram’s studies, the objective was to

observe the interaction within and be-

tween the two groups in the absence of an

obviously malevolent authority. Here,

again, the results proved shocking. Such

was the abuse meted out to the prisoners

by the guards that the study had to be

terminated after just 6 days. Zimbardo’s

conclusion from this was even more

alarming than Milgram’s. People descend

into tyranny, he suggested, because they

conform unthinkingly to the toxic roles

that authorities prescribe without the need

for specific orders: brutality was ‘‘a

‘natural’ consequence of being in the

uniform of a ‘guard’ and asserting the

power inherent in that role’’ [15].

Essays articulate a specific perspective on a topic of broad interest to scientists.

Citation: Haslam SA, Reicher SD (2012) Contesting the ‘‘Nature’’ Of Conformity: What Milgram and Zimbardo’s Studies Really Show. PLoS Biol 10(11): e1001426. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001426

Published November 20, 2012

Copyright: � 2012 Haslam, Reicher. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

* E-mail: [email protected]

PLOS Biology | www.plosbiology.org 1 November 2012 | Volume 10 | Issue 11 | e1001426

Within psychology, Milgram and Zim-

bardo helped consolidate a growing ‘‘con-

formity bias’’ [16] in which the focus on

compliance is so strong as to obscure

evidence of resistance and disobedience

[17]. However their arguments proved

particularly potent because they seemed to

mesh with real-world examples—particu-

larly evidence of the ‘‘banality of evil.’’

This term was coined in Hannah Arendt’s

account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann

[18], a chief architect of the Nazis’ ‘‘final

solution to the Jewish question’’ [19].

Despite being responsible for the trans-

portation of millions of people to their

death, Arendt suggested that Eichmann

was no psychopathic monster. Instead his

trial revealed him to be a diligent and

efficient bureaucrat—a man more con-

cerned with following orders than with

asking deep questions about their morality

or consequence.

Much of the power of Milgram and

Zimbardo’s research derives from the fact

that it appears to give empirical substance

to this claim that evil is banal [3]. It seems

to show that tyranny is a natural and

unavoidable consequence of humans’ in-

herent motivation to bend to the wishes of

those in authority—whoever they may be

and whatever it is that they want us to do.

Put slightly differently, it operationalizes an

apparent tragedy of the human condition:

our desire to be good subjects is stronger

than our desire to be subjects who do good.

Questioning the Consensus: Conformity Isn’t Natural and It Doesn’t Explain Tyranny

The banality of evil thesis appears to be

a truth almost universally acknowledged.

Not only is it given prominence in social

psychology textbooks [20], but so too it

informs the thinking of historians [21,22],

political scientists [23], economists [24],

and neuroscientists [25]. Indeed, via a

range of social commentators, it has

shaped the public consciousness much

more broadly [26], and, in this respect,

can lay claim to being the most influential

data-driven thesis in the whole of psychol-

ogy [27,28].

Yet despite the breadth of this consen-

sus, in recent years, we and others have

reinterrogated its two principal underpin-

nings—the archival evidence pertaining to

Eichmann and his ilk, and the specifics of

Milgram and Zimbardo’s empirical dem-

onstrations—in ways that tell a very

different story [29].

First, a series of thoroughgoing histor-

ical examinations have challenged the idea

that Nazi bureaucrats were ever simply

following orders [19,26,30]. This may

have been the defense they relied upon

when seeking to minimize their culpability

[31], but evidence suggests that function-

aries like Eichmann had a very good

understanding of what they were doing

and took pride in the energy and applica-

tion that they brought to their work.

Typically too, roles and orders were

vague, and hence for those who wanted

to advance the Nazi cause (and not all

did), creativity and imagination were

required in order to work towards the

regime’s assumed goals and to overcome

the challenges associated with any given

task [32]. Emblematic of this, the practical

details of ‘‘the final solution’’ were not

handed down from on high, but had to be

elaborated by Eichmann himself. He then

felt compelled to confront and disobey his

superiors—most particularly Himmler—

when he believed that they were not

sufficiently faithful to eliminationist Nazi

principles [19].

Second, much the same analysis can be

used to account for behavior in the

Stanford Prison Experiment. So while it

may be true that Zimbardo gave his

guards no direct orders, he certainly gave

them a general sense of how he expected

them to behave [33]. During the orienta-

tion session he told them, amongst other

things, ‘‘You can create in the prisoners

feelings of boredom, a sense of fear to

some degree, you can create a notion of

arbitrariness that their life is totally

controlled by us, by the system, you,

me… We’re going to take away their

individuality in various ways. In general

what all this leads to is a sense of

powerlessness’’ [34]. This contradicts Zim-

bardo’s assertion that ‘‘behavioral scripts

associated with the oppositional roles of

prisoner and guard [were] the sole source

of guidance’’ [35] and leads us to question

the claim that conformity to these role-

related scripts was the primary cause of

guard brutality.

But even with such guidance, not all

guards acted brutally. And those who did

used ingenuity and initiative in responding

to Zimbardo’s brief. Accordingly, after the

experiment was over, one prisoner con-

fronted his chief tormentor with the

observation that ‘‘If I had been a guard I

don’t think it would have been such a

masterpiece’’ [34]. Contrary to the banal-

ity of evil thesis, the Zimbardo-inspired

tyranny was made possible by the active

engagement of enthusiasts rather than the

leaden conformity of automatons.

Turning, third, to the specifics of

Milgram’s studies, the first point to note

is that the primary dependent measure

(flicking a switch) offers few opportunities

for creativity in carrying out the task.

Nevertheless, several of Milgram’s findings

typically escape standard reviews in which

the paradigm is portrayed as only yielding

up evidence of obedience. Initially, it is

clear that the ‘‘baseline study’’ is not

especially typical of the 30 or so variants

of the paradigm that Milgram conducted.

Here the percentage of participants going

to 450 V varied from 0% to nearly 100%,

but across the studies as a whole, a

majority of participants chose not to go

this far [10,36,37].

Furthermore, close analysis of the

experimental sessions shows that partici-

pants are attentive to the demands made

on them by the Learner as well as the

Experimenter [38]. They are torn between

two voices confronting them with irrecon-

cilable moral imperatives, and the fact that

they have to choose between them is a

source of considerable anguish. They

sweat, they laugh, they try to talk and

argue their way out of the situation. But

the experimental set-up does not allow

them to do so. Ultimately, they tend to go

along with the Experimenter if he justifies

their actions in terms of the scientific

benefits of the study (as he does with the

prod ‘‘The experiment requires that you

continue’’) [39]. But if he gives them a

direct order (‘‘You have no other choice,

you must go on’’) participants typically

refuse. Once again, received wisdom

proves questionable. The Milgram studies

seem to be less about people blindly

conforming to orders than about getting

people to believe in the importance of

what they are doing [40].

Tyranny as a Product of Identification-Based Followership

Our suspicions about the plausibility of

the banality of evil thesis and its various

empirical substrates were first raised

through our work on the BBC Prison

Study (BPS [41]). Like the Stanford study,

this study randomly assigned men to

groups as guards and prisoners and

examined their behaviour with a specially

created ‘‘prison.’’ Unlike Zimbardo, how-

ever, we took no leadership role in the

study. Without this, would participants

conform to a hierarchical script or resist it?

The study generated three clear find-

ings. First, participants did not conform

automatically to their assigned role. Sec-

ond, they only acted in terms of group

membership to the extent that they

actively identified with the group (such

that they took on a social identification)

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[42]. Third, group identity did not mean

that people simply accepted their assigned

position; instead, it empowered them to

resist it. Early in the study, the Prisoners’

identification as a group allowed them

successfully to challenge the authority of

the Guards and create a more egalitarian

system. Later on, though, a highly commit-

ted group emerged out of dissatisfaction

with this system and conspired to create a

new hierarchy that was far more draconian.

Ultimately, then, the BBC Prison Study

came close to recreating the tyranny of the

Stanford Prison Experiment. However it

was neither passive conformity to roles nor

blind obedience to rules that brought the

study to this point. On the contrary, it was

only when they had internalized roles and

rules as aspects of a system with which

they identified that participants used them

as a guide to action. Moreover, on the

basis of this shared identification, the

hallmark of the tyrannical regime was

not conformity but creative leadership and

engaged followership within a group of

true believers (see also [43,44]). As we

have seen, this analysis mirrors recent

conclusions about the Nazi tyranny. To

complete the argument, we suggest that it

is also applicable to Milgram’s paradigm.

The evidence, noted above, about the

efficacy of different ‘‘prods’’ already points

to the fact that compliance is bound up

with a sense of commitment to the

experiment and the experimenter over

and above commitment to the learner (S.

Haslam, SD Reicher, M. Birney, unpub-

lished data) [39]. This use of prods is but

one aspect of Milgram’s careful manage-

ment of the paradigm [13] that is aimed at

securing participants’ identification with

the scientific enterprise.

Significantly, though, the degree of

identification is not constant across all

variants of the study. For instance, when

the study is conducted in commercial

premises as opposed to prestigious Yale

University labs one might expect the

identification to diminish and (as our

argument implies) compliance to decrease.

It does. More systematically, we have

examined variations in participants’ iden-

tification with the Experimenter and the

science that he represents as opposed to

their identification with the Learner and

the general community. They always

identify with both to some degree—hence

the drama and the tension of the para-

digm. But the degree matters, and greater

identification with the Experimenter is

highly predictive of a greater willingness

among Milgram’s participants to adminis-

ter the maximum shock across the para-

digm’s many variants [37].

However, some of the most compelling

evidence that participants’ administration

of shocks results from their identification

with Milgram’s scientific goals comes from

what happened after the study had ended.

In his debriefing, Milgram praised partic-

ipants for their commitment to the ad-

vancement of science, especially as it had

come at the cost of personal discomfort.

This inoculated them against doubts

concerning their own punitive actions,

but it also it led them to support more of

such actions in the future. ‘‘I am happy to

have been of service,’’ one typical partic-

ipant responded, ‘‘Continue your experi-

ments by all means as long as good can

come of them. In this crazy mixed up

world of ours, every bit of goodness is

needed’’ (S. Haslam, SD Reicher, K

Millward, R MacDonald, unpublished

data).

Conclusion

The banality of evil thesis shocks us by

claiming that decent people can be

transformed into oppressors as a result of

their ‘‘natural’’ conformity to the roles and

rules handed down by authorities. More

particularly, the inclination to conform is

thought to suppress oppressors’ ability to

engage intellectually with the fact that

what they are doing is wrong.

Although it remains highly influential,

this thesis loses credibility under close

empirical scrutiny. On the one hand, it

ignores copious evidence of resistance

even in studies held up as demonstrating

that conformity is inevitable [17]. On the

other hand, it ignores the evidence that

those who do heed authority in doing evil

do so knowingly not blindly, actively not

passively, creatively not automatically.

They do so out of belief not by nature,

out of choice not by necessity. In short,

they should be seen—and judged—as

engaged followers not as blind conformists

[45].

What was truly frightening about Eich-

mann was not that he was unaware of

what he was doing, but rather that he

knew what he was doing and believed it to

be right. Indeed, his one regret, expressed

prior to his trial, was that he had not killed

more Jews [19]. Equally, what is shocking

about Milgram’s experiments is that rather

than being distressed by their actions [46],

participants could be led to construe them

as ‘‘service’’ in the cause of ‘‘goodness.’’

To understand tyranny, then, we need

to transcend the prevailing orthodoxy that

this derives from something for which

humans have a natural inclination—a

‘‘Lucifer effect’’ to which they succumb

thoughtlessly and helplessly (and for

which, therefore, they cannot be held

accountable). Instead, we need to under-

stand two sets of inter-related processes:

those by which authorities advocate op-

pression of others and those that lead

followers to identify with these authorities.

How did Milgram and Zimbardo justify

the harmful acts they required of their

participants and why did participants

identify with them—some more than

others?

These questions are complex and full

answers fall beyond the scope of this essay.

Yet, regarding advocacy, it is striking how

destructive acts were presented as con-

structive, particularly in Milgram’s case,

where scientific progress was the warrant

for abuse. Regarding identification, this

reflects several elements: the personal

histories of individuals that render some

group memberships more plausible than

others as a source of self-definition; the

relationship between the identities on offer

in the immediate context and other

identities that are held and valued in other

contexts; and the structure of the local

context that makes certain ways of orient-

ing oneself to the social world seem more

‘‘fitting’’ than others [41,47,48].

At root, the fundamental point is that

tyranny does not flourish because perpe-

trators are helpless and ignorant of their

actions. It flourishes because they actively

identify with those who promote vicious

acts as virtuous [49]. It is this conviction

that steels participants to do their dirty

work and that makes them work energet-

ically and creatively to ensure its success.

Moreover, this work is something for

which they actively wish to be held

accountable—so long as it secures the

approbation of those in power.

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