The nature of perceived authority in the milgram paradigm: Two replications

Abstract

Thirty-eight college students watched a short, edited version of Milgram’s documentary film, Obedience. They were then randomly assigned to one of two responseconditions: A Choice condition, in which they chose one of six explanations for the compliance of a subject depicted in the film, or a Likelihood condition, where they used a Likert-type scale to indicate the likelihood that each explanation elicited the subject’s compliance. The six explanations were based on French and Raven’s (1959) constructs regarding the bases of social power. We found that expert and legitimate power were judged as the most likely explanations in both conditions, replicating the findings of an earlier study that had used a different response format, i.e. rankordering the explanations, and thereby verifying the generality and robustness of the phenomenon.