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Administrative Obedience: Carrying Out Orders to use Psychological‐Administrative Violence
Author(s) -
Meeus Wim H. J.,
Raaijmakers Quinten A. W.
Publication year - 1986
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.2420160402
Subject(s) - obedience , milgram experiment , psychology , social psychology , test (biology) , harm , context (archaeology) , task (project management) , management , paleontology , economics , biology
A paradigm named ‘administrative obedience’ was designed to study obedience in carrying out orders to use a kind of violence that is typical for our times, namely psychological‐administrative violence resulting in definite harm. In this study, the victim was an applicant for a job, who came to the laboratory to take a test, This test would determine whether or not he would get the job. Subjects were ordered, in the context of a research project, to make the applicant nervous and to disturb him during the test; consequently, the applicant failed the test and remained unemployed. More than 90 per cent of the subjects carried out these orders, although they considered them unfair and did not enjoy doing the task, The level of administrative obedience found in our study is higher than the level of obedience found in the comparable experiment by Milgram. The experimental conditions ‘Experimental absent’ and ‘Two peers rebel’ produced a reduction of obedience in our paradigm comparable to that which occurred in Milgram's paradigm.