Meeus & Raaijmakers 1985 AIMS: The aim of Meeus & 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.

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 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. The participants were told 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.The harassing consisted of 15 negative statements - 5 each for the second, third and fourth question sets. 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 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.

Set of questions Stress remark Stress level N0 of errorsSet 1 0 n/a 0Set 2 1

2345

2933354145

00012

Set 3 678910

4144485152

23456

Set 4 1112131415

5253586065

778910

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.

FINDINGS

Baseline Procedure: 91.7% of the participants 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.None of the participants in the experimental condition put up any real opposition to the experimenter’s demands.

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.

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 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.