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Just following orders? The rhetorical invocation of ‘obedience’ in Stanley Milgram's post‐experiment interviews
Author(s) -
Gibson Stephen,
Blenkinsopp Grace,
Johnstone Elizabeth,
Marshall Aimee
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
european journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1099-0992
pISSN - 0046-2772
DOI - 10.1002/ejsp.2351
Subject(s) - milgram experiment , obedience , psychology , rhetorical question , social psychology , invocation , context (archaeology) , conformity , warrant , law , political science , paleontology , linguistics , philosophy , financial economics , economics , biology
Recent research has begun to challenge the received idea that Milgram's ‘obedience’ experiments are demonstrations of obedience as typically understood (i.e., as social influence elicited in response to direct orders). One key warrant for explaining the studies in terms of obedience has been the post‐experiment interviews conducted with participants. The present study uses data from archived audio recordings of these interviews to highlight the extent to which participants used rhetorical strategies emphasising obedience when pressed by the interviewer to account for their behaviour. Previous research that has used these accounts as reports of underlying processes misses the extent to which they performed particular social actions in the context of their production. It is concluded that the standard social psychological version of ‘obedience’ is present in the experiments after all, but in a rather different way than is typically assumed—rather than an empirical finding, obedience is a participants' resource.