Compliance to Authority: The Power of a Uniform

COMPLIANCE TO AUTHORITY

Our instinct to obey authority can have dramatic consequences: A nurse may blindly follow a doctor's orders of giving a patient a lethal dosage of medicine even though she knows it may be wrong. The Nazis famous defence at the Nuremburg trials was "just following orders". Although fictional, Lance Corporal Dawson and Private Downey in A Few Good Men accidentally killed Private Santiago under the orders to give him a Code Red (It's a great film/play, I definitely recommend it).

Something is wrong here. Why do we comply to the request of someone of authority like rats (or children) comply to follow the Pied Piper? 

Milgram's experiment

Milgram seeked to investigate this conflict between obedience and conscience, particularly to find justifications for the atrocities committed by the Nazis in WW2. Was it possible that Germans were particularly susceptible to comply to authority figures? Milgram (1963) wanted to see how far the average Joe would go in obeying an order that involved hurting another person. 

You can watch the video below summarising his study.

The Procedure 

At the beginning of the experiment participants were introduced to one another, had a nice chat, then drew straws for two roles; either the teacher or the learner. However, one of the participants wasn't actually a participant, he was in on it (known as a confederate). There was also an experimenter dressed in a grey lab coat who ran the experiment.

The learner (confederate) was taught a list of world pairs that would have to later be recalled. Following this, he was strapped into a sort of electric chair.

Now the really interesting stuff starts...

When testing started the teacher was instructed by the experimenter to give the learner (remember he is a confederate) an electric shock when a word-pair was incorrect. These shocks started at 15 volts and went to 450V.

As the shocks increased, the increased discomfort of the learner (obviously) increased, yet the teacher would still increase the voltage. After a while, many of them refused to give any more shocks to the learner because they knew they were hurting him, but upon the instruction or command of the experimenter in the grey lab coat, they would keep going.

65% of the teachers went to the highest voltage whilst all of them went to 300 volts, definitely enough to kill a man.

The results rocked the U.S. Even ordinary people will follow orders given by someone of authority, even to the extent that they would kill them. 

The news shocked everyone.

The Power of the Uniform

In Milgram's original study the experimenter wore a grey lab coat. Nothing too huge or extravagant right? Well that grey lab coat had a pretty huge effect.  In an extension to the original the experimenter was 'called away' and an ordinary looking person in civilian clothing took his place. Without the lab coat, compliance dropped to 20%; an obvious sign that wearing the lab coat added power.

Bickman (1974) ran a series of experiments to find if different uniforms have different effects on obedience. He had participants approached by people in three costumes:

1) Milkman
2) Policeman
3) Civilian clothing

Passerbys were told to pick up a bag, give money to someone or move away from where they were standing. When told by the man in a seemingly convincing policeman uniform, the participants were twice as likely to follow an order than the other men in uniform. The compliance even continued after the policeman walked away.

Children also see power in a police uniform, and learn this at a pretty young age. When shown pictures of three different men, children were asked about who could make a lawful arrest. One man was a police officer out of uniform, the other was a police officer in uniform and the last was an imposter; a man who wasn't an officer of the law, yet was in uniform. Although told that he wasn't a policeman, the children still chose the non-policeman (Durkin)

An eye opening experiment also showed that a man wearing a costume could tell people to keep someone prisoner, get them to a jump on the spot or even worse than all of the aforementioned atrocities... litter.

So what can we do? Well we often look up to authority to help us. The person of authority is the one we trust. They may be wiser, and in the case of the police; they may truly come to our aid when we need them. So, still trust your neighbourhood Bobby, do what he says if it makes sense. However, if you aren't quite sure, make sure to ask for some identification.

References:

Bickman, L. (1974). The social power of a uniform1. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 4(1), 47-61.

Durkin, K., & Jeffery, L. (2000). The salience of the uniform in young children's perception of police status. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 5(1), 47-55.

Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. The Journal of abnormal and social psychology, 67(4), 371.

Inoculation theory: how to fight being influenced

The denial of scientific research can have dramatic consequences.

Sure, denying the existence of the dinosaurs or arguing that the Earth isn't round isn't going to kill anyone, but denial of the effectiveness of vaccines because it is believed that they cause autism is causing a rise in the number of preventable diseases.

When we present evidence that contradicts someone's beliefs, that someone's beliefs may grow even stronger. When proving that vaccines aren't linked to autism, anti-vaxxers express their belief even more strongly. The same occurs with the idea that humans are causing climate change; presenting more evidence can lead more people to believe the contrary.

The famous facepalm

Inoculation

To  neutralise the misinformation found in these theories one should make use of inoculation theory. This theory applies inoculation, often associated with vaccines, to knowledge. First developed by McGuire in 1961, inoculation theory helps us to preserve our original attitudes and beliefs in the face of persuasion. Just like a shot in the arm uses weakened or dead viruses that stimulates our immune system to protect against future attacks, an inoculation uses a weakened version of a future persuasion attempt. The weak attack is refuted (or the potential victim receives help to refute it), with the end results being that they are less likely to be affected by a stronger attack.

Applied Inoculation

The theory has been replicated in a variety of contexts including politics, public relations, and smoking and drinking prevention. Here is a video showing Obama making using of inoculation before he was elected President:

Research in Inoculation

Recognizing a serious problem with student credit card debt, and with no clear way to solve this (at the time), Compton & Pfau (2004) tested whether inoculation theory would extend to students under attack from credit card marketing. Compton & Pfau set out their inoculation in 3 phases:

1) Participants were assessed whether or not they had a credit card and their attitude towards credit cards.

2) Their attitudes towards credit cards were assessed again, followed by an inoculation message.

3) Participants were then subjected to a simulated credit card advertising message, then again were assessed on their attitudes towards credit cards

Results

Inoculation helped to defend against credit card advertisements, with students protecting healthy attitudes about credit cards. As the table below shows; students were also more likely to pay-down their credit card debts if they had them, whilst word-of-mouth communication about credit card debt to other peers increased.

How does it work?

Inoculation works by engaging the central route of processing an attitude. The inoculation message's weak attack causes the person to think carefully, unlike peripheral processing in which people bypass the whole thinking part. Inoculation causes people to think more than they would otherwise. This thinking develops stronger attitudes about an object, in the above case; attitudes about credit card use, and this will lead to a behaviour change (as the picture below shows)

So if you want to succeed in inoculating people against those pesky credit card companies, or against any cold-calling companies then it'll be good to follow these three rules:

1.  Warn the receiver of the impending attack.
2.  Make a weak attack (not too strong or weak; like a vaccine should be)
3.  Get the receiver to actively defend the attitude.


References

Compton, J. A., & Pfau, M. (2004). Use of inoculation to foster resistance to credit card marketing targeting college students. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 32, 343-364.

McGuire, W. J., & Papageorgis, D. (1961). The relative efficacy of various types of prior belief-defense in producing immunity against persuasion.The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 62, 327.