You and I are alike, so I will hold back – The effect of directed empathy on the behavior of participants of Stanley Milgram's obedience paradigm

Abstract

Experiments on obedience to authority conducted under the paradigm developed by Milgram have demonstrated that empathy plays either no or a very limited role in determining participants' behaviors. This study proposes that this occurs due to participants empathizing with both “learners” and experimenters. Empathy with learners makes participants withdraw from the experiment, while empathy with experimenters makes them continue. Therefore, the more that participants are characterized by dispositional empathy, the more they are reluctant to hurt learners but, at the same time, the more they try not to disappoint experimenters. This study investigates the effects of empathy being situationally directed toward learners. After manipulating the alleged similarities between “teachers” and “learners” in terms of crucial attitudes and values, the degree to which teachers obeyed experimenters and were willing to electrocute learners was measured. The results confirm that situationally directed empathy reduces participants' obedience to experimenters.

Keywords

• Dispositional empathy
• Situational empathy
• Milgram
• Obedience
• Authority
• Social influence