Wim Meeus & Quinten Raaijmakers 1985

AIMS: The aim of Wim Meeus & Quinten Raaijmakers was to test obedience in a way which would do harm but in a more up-to-date way  - ie: more psychological than physical. They called it: “violence typical of our times”.

1980s Dutch culture was much more liberal than early 1960s American culture; so the intention was to see if the power of obedience to a higher authority would still apply in a different cultural setting.

They also wanted to eradicate certain ambiguities in Milgram’s study - primarily that the levels of shock appeared to be dangerous, confirmed by the learner/victim going silent and the levers being labelled ‘severe shock’, etc, yet the participants had been told there would be no permanent tissue damage.

PROCEDURE (METHOD):

Baseline Procedure:There were 39 participants aged 18-55, both male and female and of at least Dutch high school education. They were volunteers recruited through a newspaper advertisement and paid a small amount (the equivalent of $13). 24 of the volunteers were allocated to the experimental group while 15 were put in a control group.

The experiment was in a modern university building and the male researcher, about 30 years old, was well-dressed and friendly but stern. The experiment lasted about 30 minutes.

The participants were were given the role of ‘interviewer’ and ordered to harass a ‘job applicant’ (actually a confederate) to make him nervous while sitting a test to determine if he would get the job. Although the premise of the set-up was that the experimenters were researching the relationship between psychological stress and test achievement, they were also told that the applicant did not know the real purpose of the study - they heard the applicant being told that poor performance on the test would not affect their job prospects - and that the job being applied for was real. The applicant, listening via a speaker in a different room, had to answer 32 multiple-choice questions read out in four sets by the interviewer.

Procedure Variations: Removal of the experimenter and introducing rebellious peers both led to a substantial reduction in obedience amongst the real participants - 36.4% and 15.8% respectively were fully obedient. 81% believed the study in the ‘experimenter absent’ condition was real, 14% had some doubts and 5% thought it was a hoax. 84% believed the study in the ‘rebellious peers’ condition was real, 16% had some doubts and 0% thought it was a hoax,

The graphic shows the relative influence of the 2 variation conditions.

CONCLUSIONS: Even in a more liberal culture than that of Stanley Milgram’s studies, people obeyed an authority figure and went against their better nature to do something designed to hurt another person. Unemployment in the Netherlands was high at the time so Meeus & Raaijmakers had assumed participants would be even more reluctant to make an interview even more difficult for the person trying to get the job.

They explained the higher levels of obedience (compared to Milgram) as due to the fact that psychological violence is different to physical violence. The former lacks the latter’s immediacy, with the consequences coming later.

The researchers explained the reduction in obedience in the ‘experimenter’ absent condition as being due to the participant having to take personal responsibility. They attributed the reduction in obedience in the ‘rebellious peers’ condition as both having to take personal responsibility and having the peers to model.

CRITICISMS (EVALUATION): The task was hardly an everyday scenario so the experiment may have lacked ecological validity.

However, the sample was made up of Dutch adults from the general population and, therefore, could be said to be representative. The findings are consistent with other obedience experiments and so could be said to have population validity.

The experiment was tightly controlled, making it replicable.

Meeus & Raaijmakers planned the study so explicit comparisons could be made with Milgram’s work and he supported the findings, suggesting that this was a genuine and robust effect of recognising authority and supported the concept of agency.

There were certain was in which the participants’ perceptions were manipulated which made them different to Milgram’s participants:-

• MIlgram’s participants did not agree to cause physical harm to the victim whereas the Meeus & Raaijmakers’ participants did agree to cause psychological harm to their victim
• The Dutch applicant-victim had the potential of  losing his job prospects if he stopped the study

A different approach to cross-cultural study of obedience was taken by V Lee Hamilton & Joseph Sanders (1995) who presented participants from the USA, Japan and Russia with stories of crime set in the workplace. Some of the crimes were on the actor’s own initiative while others were on the orders of a superior. When questioned about how responsible the actor was, respondents attributed little responsibility to the actor when he was under orders but a lot of responsibility when they acted independently. However, there was some cultural difference, with Americans generally attributing more responsibility to the actor under orders than the Russians or Japanese. However, it must be remembered that Hamilton & Sanders were testing attitudes towards obedience. Meeus & Raaijmakers, like Milgram, tested behaviour.

The harassing consisted of 15 negative statements - 5 each for the second, third and fourth question sets. (No negative statements were made during the first question set.)  These appeared on a TV screen, telling the interviewer when to make the remarks and what to say. The comments built from mild criticism  - “Your answer to question 9 was wrong” - to devastating utterances such as “This job is too difficult for you. You are only suited to lower functions.” No errors were made in the first question set but 10 were made over the next 3 sets - 8 being enough to ‘fail’ the test.

The applicant had been instructed to begin confidently but to protest at the negative statements - eg: “But surely...” and “My answer wasn’t wrong, was it?” The applicant acted increasingly distressed until reaching the point - at the eighth or ninth negative statement - where he begged the interviewer to stop. The applicants then accused the interviewer of lying to him about the study and withdrawing consent. The interviewers were were told to ignore the applicant’s interruptions and were given 4 verbal prods to continue the remarks if they refused to go on. The participants were told that electrodes on the applicant’s skull were measuring tension which was displayed numerically on a sequence panel, running from 15 to 65. The experimenter, next to the participant, added verbal comments on the stress indicators displayed such as “normal” or “intense”.

The graphic shows the stress level and errors were manipulated.

With the control group the participants could choose when to make the negative statements and could stop making them at any time during the test. When the participants in the control group stopped the negative statements, the applicant had been instructed to stop making errors and their ‘tension’ levels would drop.

Procedure Variations: With 41 participants Meeus & Raaijmakers made two variations on the baseline:-

• The experimenter set up the study, ordered the stress remarks and then left the room (22 participants)
• Two confederates played co-interviewers alongside the real participant - protesting after stress remark 8 (causing the experimenter to go through the 4 verbal prods) and refusing, first one and then the other, to continue after stress remark 10 (when the applicant withdrew their consent to the experiment) - though the experimenter asked the real participant to continue (19 participants).

FINDINGS (RESULTS):

Baseline Procedure: 91.7% of the participants (22 out of 24) obeyed by disturbing and criticising the applicant with all 15 statements when told to do so by the researcher. The mean of the stress remarks given was 14.81. The participants were observed to act aloof with the applicant and shifted blame, acting as agents of the experimenter.

From follow-up questionnaires, it was clear they obeyed even though they thought it was unfair and they did not want to do it.73% believed the experiment was real, 23% were not sure and 4% thought it was a hoax. 45% blamed the experimenter, 33% blamed themselves and 22% blamed the applicant.

No one in the control group made the stress remarks. 41% blamed the experimenter, 41% thought they were to blame and 18% blamed the applicant.

None of the participants in the experimental condition put up any real opposition to the experimenter’s demands.