OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY

13. An Alternative Theory: Is Aggression the Key?

I have explained the behavior observed in the laboratory in the way that seemed to me to make the most sense. An alternative view is that what we have observed in the laboratory is aggression, the flow of destructive tendencies, released because the occasion permitted its expression. This view seems to me erroneous, and I will indicate why. But first let me state the “aggression” argument:

By aggression we mean an impulse or action to harm another organism. In the Freudian view, destructive forces are present in all individuals, but they do not always find ready release, for their expression is inhibited by superego, or conscience. Furthermore, ego functions -- the reality-oriented side of man -- also keep destructive tendencies under control. (If we strike out every time we are angry, it will ultimately bring us harm, and thus we restrain ourselves.) Indeed, so unacceptable are these destructive instincts, that they are not always available to conscious scrutiny. However, they continually press for expression and, in the end, find release in the violence of war, sadistic pleasures, individual acts of anti-social destruction, and under certain circumstances self-destruction.

The experiment creates an occasion in which it becomes socially acceptable to harm another person; moreover, it allows the subject to do this under the guise of advancing a socially valued cause: science.

Thus, the individual, at the conscious level, views himself as serving a socially valued end, but the motive force for his compliance stems from the fact that, in shocking the learner, he is satisfying instinctually rooted destructive tendencies.

This view also corresponds to the typical common-sense interpretation of the observed obedience. For, when the experiment is first described to ordinary men and women, they immediately think in terms of the “beast in man coming out,” sadism, the lust for inflicting pain on others, the outpouring of the dark and evil part of the soul.

Although aggressive tendencies are part and parcel of human nature, they have hardly anything to do with the behavior observed in the experiment. Nor do they have much to do with the destructive obedience of soldiers in war, of bombardiers killing thousands on a single mission, or enveloping a Vietnamese village in searing napalm. The typical soldier kills because he is told to kill and he regards it as his duty to obey orders. The act of shocking the victim does not stem from destructive urges but from the fact that subjects have become integrated into a social structure and are unable to get out of it.

Suppose the experimenter instructed the subject to drink a glass of water. Does this mean the subject is thirsty? Obviously not, for he is simply doing what he is told to do. It is the essence of obedience that the action carried out does not correspond to the motives of the actor but is initiated in the motive system of those higher up in the social hierarchy.

There is experimental evidence bearing on this issue. It will be recalled that in Experiment 11, subjects were free to use any shock level they wished, and the experimenter took pains to legitimize the use of all levers on the board. Though given full opportunity to inflict pain on the learner, almost all subjects administered the lowest shocks on the control panel, the mean shock level being 3.6. But if destructive impulses were really pressing for release, and the subject could justify his use of high shock levels in the cause of science, why did they not make the victim suffer?

There was little if any tendency in the subjects to do this. One or two, at most, seemed to derive any satisfaction from shocking the learner. The levels were in no way comparable to that obtained when the subjects are ordered to shock the victim. There was an order-of-magnitude difference.

Similarly, we may turn to studies of aggression carried out by Buss (1961) and Berkowitz (1962), using a format quite similar to our Experiment 11. The aim of these investigators was to study aggression per se. In typical experimental manipulations, they frustrated the subject to see whether he would administer higher shocks when angry. But the effect of these manipulations was minuscule compared with the levels obtained under obedience. That is to say, no matter what these experimenters did to anger, irritate, or frustrate the subject, he would at most move up one or two shock levels, say from shock level 4 to level 6. This represents a genuine increment in aggression. But there remained an order-of-magnitude difference in the variation introduced in his behavior this way, and under conditions where he was taking orders.

In observing the subjects in the obedience experiment, one could see that, with minor exceptions, these individuals were performing a task that was distasteful and often disagreeable but which they felt obligated to carry out. Many protested shocking the victim even while they were unable to disengage themselves from the experimenter’s authority. Now and then a subject did come along who seemed to relish the task of making the victim scream. But he was the rare exception, and clearly appeared as the queer duck among our subjects.

An additional source of experimental evidence is the role-permutation studies (see Chapter 8). In several of these experiments subjects were given opportunities to shock the victim but did not do so unless the social structure of the situation was appropriately arranged.

The key to the behavior of subjects lies not in pent-up anger or aggression but in the nature of their relationship to authority. They have given themselves to the authority; they see themselves as instruments for the execution of his wishes; once so defined, they are unable to break free.

Go to Next Page