Doubting the power of prestige: obedience to authority beyond institutional and research justifications
Doubting the power of prestige: obedience to authority beyond institutional and research justifications
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Authors
Grzyb, Tomasz
Doliński, Dariusz
Sudoł-Malisz, Marta
Kulik, Grzegorz
Mielczarek, Łukasz
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2025-07-10
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Scientific Reports
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1
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15
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1-9
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2025-07-10
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Stanley Milgram’s groundbreaking research on obedience to authority remains a foundational study in social psychology. His work revealed that a significant majority of individuals when instructed by an authoritative figure, were willing to administer what they believed were severe electric shocks to another person, all in the context of a supposed learning experiment. Given the high levels of stress Milgram imposed on participants, ethical concerns now make a direct replication of his study untenable. In 2009, however, Burger introduced a modified version, often referred to as “obedience lite,” which halts the procedure after participants administer a 150-volt shock. Both Burger and subsequent researchers have replicated Milgram’s experiment using this modified approach, recruiting participants via newspaper advertisements and utilizing a large shock-emitting device similar to Milgram’s original setup. However, questions remain as to whether such replication studies should account for the technological advancements that have occurred over the decades. This article presents a study in which participants were recruited online, and a smaller, computer-connected device was used to simulate the electric shocks. The research also explored the impact of different environments (university vs. non-university settings) and the framing of the study (scientific vs. marketing) on participants’ behavior. The findings revealed that the levels of obedience closely mirrored those observed by Milgram in the 1960s, with neither the study’s location nor the framing significantly influencing participants’ actions.
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