Influence: Science and Practice (42 page)

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In fact, Milgram first began his investigations in an attempt to understand how the German citizenry could have participated in the concentration camp destruction of millions of innocents during the years of Nazi ascendancy. After testing his experimental procedures in the United States, he had planned to take them to Germany, a country whose populace he was sure would provide enough obedience for a full-flown scientific analysis of the concept. The first eye-opening experiment in New Haven, Connecticut, however, make it clear that he could save his money and stay close to home. “I found so much obedience,” he said, “I hardly saw the need of taking the experiment to Germany.”

    But Americans have no monopoly on the need to obey authority. When Milgram’s basic procedure was eventually repeated in Holland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Australia, and Jordan, the results were similar (see Meeus & Raaijmakers, 1986, for a review). Nor has the passage of decades diminished the applicability of Milgram’s results. A recent study that replicated several of his experimental features found no significant differences between Milgram’s subjects and a modern day sample (Burger, in press).

For those whose doubts remain, the story of S. Brian Willson might prove instructive. On September 1, 1987, to protest U.S. shipments of military equipment to Nicaragua, Mr. Willson and two other men stretched their bodies across the railroad tracks leading out of the Naval Weapons Station in Concord, California. The protesters were confident that their act would halt the scheduled train’s progress that day, as they had notified navy and railroad officials of their intent three days before. But the civilian crew, which had been given orders not to stop, never even
slowed the train, despite being able to see the protesters 600 feet ahead. Although two of the men managed to scramble out of harm’s way, Mr. Willson was not quick enough to avoid being struck and having both legs severed below the knee. Because navy medical corpsmen at the scene refused to treat him or allow him to be taken to the hospital in their ambulance, onlookers—including Mr. Willson’s wife and son—were left to try to staunch the flow of blood for 45 minutes until a private ambulance arrived.

Amazingly, Mr. Willson, who served four years in Vietnam, does not blame either the crewmen or the corpsmen for his misfortune; he points his finger, instead, at a system that constrained their actions through the pressure to obey. “They were just doing what I did in ’Nam. They were following orders that are part of an insane policy. They’re the fall guys.” Although the crew members shared Mr. Willson’s assessment of them as victims, they did not share his magnanimity. In what is perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the incident, the train crew filed suit against
him
, requesting punitive damages for the “humiliation, mental anguish, and physical stress” they suffered because he hadn’t allowed them to carry out their orders without cutting off his legs.

The Allures and Dangers of Blind Obedience

Whenever we are faced with a potent motivator of human action, it is natural to expect that good reasons exist for the motivation. In the case of obedience to authority, even a brief consideration of human social organization offers justification aplenty. A multilayered and widely accepted system of authority confers an immense advantage upon a society. It allows the development of sophisticated structures for production of resources, trade, defense, expansion, and social control that would otherwise be impossible. At the opposite end, the alternative is anarchy, a state hardly known for its beneficial effects on cultural groups and one that the social philosopher Thomas Hobbes assures us would render life “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Consequently, we are trained from birth to believe that obedience to proper authority is right and disobedience is wrong. This message fills the parental lessons, the schoolhouse rhymes, stories, and songs of our childhood and is carried forward in the legal, military, and political systems we encounter as adults. Notions of submission and loyalty to legitimate rule are accorded much value in each.

Religious instruction contributes as well. The very first book of the Bible, for example, describes how failure to obey the ultimate authority resulted in the loss of paradise for Adam, Eve, and the rest of the human race. Should that particular metaphor prove too subtle, just a bit further into the Old Testament, we can read—in what might be the closest biblical representation of the Milgram experiment—the respectful account of Abraham’s willingness to plunge a dagger through the heart of his young son because God, without any explanation, ordered it. We learn in this story that the correctness of an action was not judged by such considerations as apparent senselessness, harmfulness, injustice, or usual moral standards,
but by the mere command of a higher authority. Abraham’s tormented ordeal was a test of obedience, and he—like Milgram’s subjects, who perhaps had learned an early lesson from him—passed.

Stories like those of Abraham and Milgram’s subjects can tell us a great deal about obedience’s power and value in our culture. In another sense, however, the stories may be misleading. We rarely agonize to such a degree over the pros and cons of authority demands. In fact, our obedience frequently takes place in a
click
,
whirr
fashion with little or no conscious deliberation. Information from a recognized authority can provide us a valuable shortcut for deciding how to act in a situation.

After all, as Milgram suggests, conforming to the dictates of authority figures has always had genuine practical advantages for us. Early on, these people (parents, teachers) knew more than we did, and we found that taking their advice proved beneficial—partly because of their greater wisdom and partly because they controlled our rewards and punishments. As adults, the same benefits persist for the same reasons, though the authority figures are now employers, judges, and government leaders. Because their positions speak of greater access to information and power, it makes sense to comply with the wishes of properly constituted authorities. It makes so much sense, in fact, that we often do so when it makes no sense at all.

This paradox is, of course, the same one that attends all major weapons of influence. In this instance, once we realize that obedience to authority is mostly rewarding, it is easy to allow ourselves the convenience of automatic obedience. The simultaneous blessing and curse of such blind obedience is its mechanical character. We don’t have to think, therefore we don’t. Although such mindless obedience leads us to appropriate action most of the time, there will be conspicuous exceptions because we are reacting, not thinking.

Let’s take an example from one facet of our lives in which authority pressures are visible and strong: medicine. Health is enormously important to us. Thus, physicians, who possess great knowledge and influence in this vital area, hold the position of respected authorities. In addition, the medical establishment has a clearly terraced power and prestige structure. The various kinds of health workers well understand the level of their jobs in this structure, and they well understand, too, that M.D.s sit at the top. No one may overrule a doctor’s judgment in a case, except, perhaps, another doctor of higher rank. Consequently, a long-established tradition of automatic obedience to doctors’ orders has developed among health care staffs.

The worrisome possibility arises, then, that when a physician makes a clear error, no one lower in the hierarchy will
think
to question it—precisely because, once a legitimate authority has given an order, subordinates stop
thinking
in the situation and start reacting. Mix this kind of
click, whirr
response into a complex hospital environment and mistakes are inevitable. Indeed, according to the Institute of Medicine, which advises the U.S. Congress on health policy, hospitalized patients can expect to experience at least one medication error per day (Szabo, 2007).

Errors in the medicine patients receive can occur for a variety of reasons. However, in their book
Medication Errors: Causes and Prevention
, Temple University professors of pharmacy Michael Cohen and Neil Davis attribute much of the problem to the mindless deference given to the “boss” of a patient’s case: the attending physician. According to Cohen, “in case after case, patients, nurses, pharmacists, and other physicians do not question the prescription.” Take, for example, the strange case of the “rectal earache” reported by Cohen and Davis. A physician ordered ear drops to be administered to the right ear of a patient suffering pain and infection there. Instead of writing out completely the location “Right ear” on the prescription, the doctor abbreviated it so that the instructions read “place in R ear.” Upon receiving the prescription, the duty nurse promptly put the required number of ear drops into the patient’s anus.

Obviously, rectal treatment of an earache made no sense, but neither the patient nor the nurse questioned it. The important lesson of this story is that in many situations in which a legitimate authority has spoken, what would otherwise make sense is irrelevant. In these instances, we don’t consider the situation as a whole but attend and respond to only one aspect of it.

Who’s Really the King?
Communication researchers have learned that, in conversations, people unconsciously shift their voice and speech styles toward the styles of individuals in positions of power and authority. One study explored this phenomenon by analyzing interviews on the
Larry King Live
television show. When King interviewed guests having great social standing and prestige (for instance, Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Barbara Streisand), his voice style changed to match theirs. But when he interviewed guests of lower status (for instance, Dan Quayle, Spike Lee, and Julie Andrews), he remained unmoved, and their voice styles shifted to match his (Gregory & Webster, 1996).

READER’S REPORT 6.1
From a Texas-Based University Professor

I grew up in an Italian ghetto in Warren, Pennsylvania. I occasionally return home to visit family and the like. As in most places these days, most of the small Italian specialty stores are gone, having been replaced by larger supermarkets. My mother sent me supermarket shopping during a visit for a load of canned tomatoes, and I noticed that nearly all the cans of Furmano Italian diced tomatoes were sold out. Searching a bit on the shelf immediately beneath the almost empty shelf, I found a full shelf (loaded, even!) of Furman brand diced tomatoes. Looking closely at the labels, I realized that Furmano is Furman. The company had just added an “o” to its name when distributing some of its products. I guess it must be because, when selling Italian-style foods, you’re perceived as more of an authority if your name ends in a vowel.

Author’s note:
The man who wrote this report also commented that the added letter “o” was doing double duty as an influence trigger in that store. Not only did it lend authority to the manufacturer, in an “Italian ghetto,” it made the company appear similar to its customers.

Whenever our behaviors are governed in such an unthinking manner, we can be confident that there will be compliance professionals trying to take advantage. Returning to the field of medicine, we can see that advertisers have frequently commissioned the respect accorded doctors in our culture by hiring actors to play the roles of doctors speaking on behalf of the product. My favorite example was a TV commercial featuring the actor Robert Young warning people against the dangers of caffeine and recommending caffeine-free Sanka brand coffee. The commercial was highly successful, selling so much Sanka that it was played for years in several versions. Why should this commercial prove so effective? Why on earth would we take Robert Young’s word for the health consequences of decaffeinated coffee? Because—as the advertising agency that hired him knew perfectly well—he was associated in the minds of the American public with Marcus Welby, M.D., the role he played in an earlier long-running television series. Objectively, it doesn’t make sense to be swayed by the comments of a man we know to be just an actor who used to play a doctor; but, practically, that man sold the Sanka.

Not long ago, with comparable intent, the credit card purveyor MasterCard initiated a “Family Holiday Traditions” promotion that allowed women to chat on-line with authorities on how they, as mothers, could prepare their homes for the holidays, establish family traditions, and purchase perfect holiday gifts (using their MasterCards, of course). Who were the experts chosen to provide the informed counsel? They were the actresses Florence Henderson and Jane Kaczmarek, whose authority
credentials in these regards appeared to come solely from their roles as “TV Moms” on the television shows
The Brady Bunch
and
Malcolm in the Middle
.
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