Obedience to authority as a function of the physical proximity of the student, teacher, and experimenter

Abstract

ABSTRACT The authors are proposing a theoretical model explaining the behavior of individuals tested through experiments on obedience toward authority conducted according to Milgram’s paradigm. Their assumption is that the participant faces typical avoidance-avoidance conflict conditions. Participant does not want to hurt the learner in the adjacent room but he or she also does not want to harm the experimenter. The solution to this conflict, entailing hurting on of the two, may be different depending on the spatial organization of the experiment. In the study, experimental conditions were modified, so that the participant was (vs. was not) in the same room as the experimenter and was (vs. was not) in the same room as the learner. Forty individuals (20 women and 20 men) were tested in each of the four experimental conditions. It turns out that the physical presence of the experimenter was conducive to obedience, while the physical presence of the learner reduced it.