Becoming a teacher can reduce obedience compared to being solely an examiner. Agentic state and obedience in the Milgram paradigm

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cris.lastimport.scopus2025-12-17T04:12:37Z
dc.abstract.enStudies of obedience carried out in the Milgram paradigm tend to report shockingly high levels of obedience from people who are ordered by an authority figure to eventually, if administer all required shocks, electrocute another person. In the psychology literature, the person who carries out these commands is called the teacher. The authors of the present article note, however, that the term “examiner” would be more appropriate here, since the study participant is limited to verifying the correctness of the responses given by the student, i.e., the person sitting behind the wall. It was assumed that if the participant actually performed the role of a teacher (and thus first taught the “student,” and only then checked the correctness of the answers to questions), the level of obedience demonstrated would be reduced. The results of our experiment partially confirmed this assumption. In the examiner condition, 4 out of 40 participants (10%) refused to press all ten switches, meaning that 90% proceeded to 150 V. In the conditions where participants had first taught the student, refusals occurred more than twice as often: 9 out of 40 (22.5%), with 77.5% reaching 150 V. This difference, however, was not statistically significant. We also analyzed an indirect measure of non-compliance—the frequency with which the experimenter had to prompt participants to continue by reciting the standardized phrases prescribed by the procedure whenever participants expressed hesitation or refused to comply. These experimenter interventions were more frequent in the conditions where participants had previously taught the learner (Median = 0.5) than in the examiner condition, where their role was limited to punishing learner for his mistakes (Median = 0). This difference was statistically significant.
dc.affiliationInstytut Psychologii
dc.affiliationWydział Psychologii we Wrocławiu
dc.contributor.authorGrzyb, Tomasz
dc.contributor.authorDoliński, Dariusz
dc.date.access2025-10-15
dc.date.accessioned2025-10-28T09:51:47Z
dc.date.available2025-10-28T09:51:47Z
dc.date.created2025-09-29
dc.date.issued2025-10-15
dc.description.abstract<jats:p>Studies of obedience carried out in the Milgram paradigm tend to report shockingly high levels of obedience from people who are ordered by an authority figure to eventually, if administer all required shocks, electrocute another person. In the psychology literature, the person who carries out these commands is called the teacher. The authors of the present article note, however, that the term “examiner” would be more appropriate here, since the study participant is limited to verifying the correctness of the responses given by the student, i.e., the person sitting behind the wall. It was assumed that if the participant actually performed the role of a teacher (and thus first taught the “student,” and only then checked the correctness of the answers to questions), the level of obedience demonstrated would be reduced. The results of our experiment partially confirmed this assumption. In the examiner condition, 4 out of 40 participants (10%) refused to press all ten switches, meaning that 90% proceeded to 150 V. In the conditions where participants had first taught the student, refusals occurred more than twice as often: 9 out of 40 (22.5%), with 77.5% reaching 150 V. This difference, however, was not statistically significant. We also analyzed an indirect measure of non-compliance—the frequency with which the experimenter had to prompt participants to continue by reciting the standardized phrases prescribed by the procedure whenever participants expressed hesitation or refused to comply. These experimenter interventions were more frequent in the conditions where participants had previously taught the learner (Median = 0.5) than in the examiner condition, where their role was limited to punishing learner for his mistakes (Median = 0). This difference was statistically significant.</jats:p>
dc.description.accesstimeat_publication
dc.description.physical1-10
dc.description.versionfinal_published
dc.description.volume16
dc.identifier.doi10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1613507
dc.identifier.issn1664-1078
dc.identifier.urihttps://share.swps.edu.pl/handle/swps/1901
dc.identifier.weblinkhttps://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1613507/full
dc.languageen
dc.pbn.affiliationpsychologia
dc.rightsCC-BY
dc.rights.questionYes_rights
dc.share.articleOPEN_JOURNAL
dc.subject.enobedience
dc.subject.enMilgram paradigm
dc.subject.enteaching vs. examining
dc.subject.ensocial influence
dc.subject.encompliance
dc.swps.sciencecloudsend
dc.titleBecoming a teacher can reduce obedience compared to being solely an examiner. Agentic state and obedience in the Milgram paradigm
dc.title.journalFrontiers in Psychology
dc.typeJournalArticle
dspace.entity.typeArticle