A novel experimental approach to study disobedience to authority

Fifty years after the experiments of Stanley Milgram, the main objective of the present paper is to offer a paradigm that complies with up-to-date ethical standards and that can be adapted to various scientific disciplines, ranging from sociology and (social) psychology to neuroscience. Inspired by subsequent versions of Milgram-like paradigms and by combining the strengths of each, this paper presents a novel experimental approach to the study of (dis)obedience to authority. Volunteers are recruited in pairs and take turns to be ‘agents’ or ‘victims’, making the procedure fully reciprocal. For each trial, the agents receive an order from the experimenter to send a real, mildly painful electric shock to the ‘victim’, thus placing participants in an ecological set-up and avoiding the use of cover stories. Depending on the experimental condition, ‘agents’ receive, or do not receive, a monetary gain and are given, or are not given, an aim to obey the experimenter’s orders. Disobedience here refers to the number of times ‘agents’ refused to deliver the real shock to the ‘victim’. As the paradigm is designed to fit with brain imaging methods, I hope to bring new insights and perspectives in this area of research.

Neutral auditory words immediately followed by painful electric shock show reduced next-day recollection

In this study, we investigated the effect of experimentally delivered acute pain on explicit and implicit memory. Twenty-five subjects participated in experimental sessions on consecutive days. The first session involved a categorization task intended to induce incidental memory encoding. There were two conditions, presented in randomized order, in which subjects listened to a series of words, which was repeated three times. In one condition, one-third of the word items were immediately followed by a painful electrical shock and these pain-paired items were presented unpredictably. In the other condition, all word items were not associated with pain. Response times over these repeated presentations were assessed for differences. Explicit memory was tested the following day, employing a Remember-Know assessment of word recognition, with no shocks employed. Recollection was significantly reduced for pain-paired words, as the proportion of correct Remember responses (out of total correct responses) was significantly lower. There were no significant reductions in memory for non-pain items that followed painful stimulation after a period of several seconds. Consistent with the experience of pain consuming working memory resources, we theorize that painful shocks interrupt memory encoding for the immediately preceding experimental items, due to a shift in attention away from the word item.

Behavioral consequence of painful electric shock

Choice reaction time and hand steadiness were studied under conditions in which correct performance of a task produced painful electric shock. Task performance deteriorated in response to shock. Deterioration was greater when shock was applied to the active hand than when applied to the passive hand. The hand steadiness test also involved variation in shock intensity and administration of aspirin or placebo. Tremor increased with shock intensity, and aspirin decreased the difference in performance between shock and nonshock trials. The methods employed offer a means of laboratory simulation of disability produced by pathological pain and a possible means of evaluation of analgesic effectiveness. Submitted on September 11, 1961