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Using Discursive Psychology and Conversation Analysis to Study “Obedience” and “Defiance” in Milgram’s Experiments

  • Ann Weatherall
    ,
  • Matthew M Hollander
Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Abstract

This case study revisits one of social psychology’s most well-known research projects. It takes a discursive approach to the famed Stanley Milgram “obedience to authority” experiments. Drawing on Discursive Psychology and using Conversation Analysis, it discusses transcribed extracts from an audio recording of one of Milgram’s original experimental sessions with a participant who was categorized as “disobedient.” The behavior of all the parties in the experiment is examined. The social interactions between the experimenter, the “teacher,” and the “learner” are treated as objects for analysis in their own right. Conversation analysis is used to describe some of the sequentially organized practices that occurred within Milgram’s laboratory. One pervasive pattern was a three-turn sequence that is characteristic of learning in classroom interactions. Also shown are some of the ways the research participant challenged the experimental situation, for example, by questioning its reality and by resisting delivering the shocks with explanations of the harm it was causing the learner. Using Conversation Analysis to examine transcripts of Milgram’s research, fresh insights into the experiment are possible. Discursive Psychology using Conversation Analysis is an approach that further develops understanding of Milgram’s outcome categories of “obedience” and “defiance” by analyzing how they were produced in social interaction.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Original language

English

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

Sage Research Methods Cases

Publication milestones

  • Published - 03/01/2018

Publication status

Published - 03/01/2018

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/626238

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