Gibburt

In my previous post for Gibburt there was mention of an imaginary creature called the cattywampus. This creature was used to teach children that they should never turn off their powers of judgment and not to accept anything on without proper consideration. Unfortunately this ‘turning off your own judgment’ in the face of authority (doctors, teachers, politicians, etc.) does not only happen to children, adults suffer from it easily as much.

A famous psychological experiment in this field was conducted in the 1960’s by Stanley Milgram. In this experiment the test subject was told by a man in a white lab coat (the ‘doctor’) to administer an electric shock to a person strapped in a chair every time this person answered a certain question falsely. Additionally for each mistake the chair bound person made, the voltage was increased. Though in reality the shocks were never administered – the person in the chair was an actor who acted like he was receiving these shocks – the test subject was convinced he was actually giving the shocks. The outcome of these experiments was shocking (no pun intended), a very high percentage of the participants was willing to administer shocks well over 400 volts.

During another experiment in the 1960’s the chain of command in the medical profession was studied. Charles Hofling set up a series of experiments during which an anonymous voice on the telephone claiming to be a doctor, asked nurses to administer a certain amount of a medicine to a particular patient. The requested dosage was certainly going to be harmful for the patient (as was clearly marked on the bottle). From the 22 participating nurses, 21 started to administer the medicine regardless. It should be noted however that the medicine requested was unusual and as such unknown to the nurses. Another study using more familiar medication however yielded significantly less outspoken results.

As can be seen from the above listed examples, adults can be just as sensitive to pressures stemming from authority as the children from the previous article. To make things more complicated there are also many instances where obeying a certain authority would be the proper course of action, because this authority does represent a relevant level of skill or experience. Furthermore in our current high paced society it would be impossible to evaluate each decision thoroughly before making it, so following an established authority is one of the tools we use to keep things manageable.

Nevertheless this following of an established authority can make us vulnerable for manipulation. Thus in order to avoid being taken advantage of I would like to point out two important facts: firstly someone’s implied authority does not necessarily represent his level of expertise e.g. someone who wears a white coat in a television commercial is not per se an expert on health food choices; and secondly the level of expertise the authority does represent might not at all be relevant for the issue at stake e.g. a military officer is not necessarily the expert on certain political decisions. Keeping in mind that authority is rather easily implied by applying certain symbols such as titles and clothing and that being an authority in one field does not guarantee expertise in another, should at least improve our chances of making a proper decision.

For more information about how authority is being (mis)used please refer to Robert Cialdini’s excellent book ‘Influence’. For more information on the Milgram experiments please see this BBC documentary. Lastly I would like to refer to website of Milgram’s self appointed successor Thomas Blass.

Filed under: Science by Robert Nijssen | Social tagging: authority > cattywampus > Charles Hofling > maturity > psychology > Robert Cialdini > Stanley Milgram