When is “Obedience” Obedience? Conceptual and Historical Commentary

This article reassesses the role of obedience to authority in the Milgram experiment and in the Holocaust. I argue that the term “obedience” can be used to both describe and explain the behavior of subjects in Milgram's experiment, and that a failure to distinguish the two uses conceptually has led to an inflated sense of the extent to which Milgram's experiment demonstrates underlying obedience to authority. The article also reviews empirical evidence and alternative analyses to show that when authority influences behavior in the experiment, it may do so for reasons other than the subjects' felt obligation to obey. Finally, I suggest that contemporary history presents a more complex and problematic view of the Holocaust than that implied by social psychology's application of obedience to authority.