Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, USA.
School of Media & Information, University of Siegen, Germany.
Br J Soc Psychol. 2017 Dec;56(4):655-674. doi: 10.1111/bjso.12206. Epub 2017 Jun 26.
We bring an ethnomethodological perspective on language and discourse to a data source crucial for explaining behaviour in social psychologist Stanley Milgram's classic 'obedience' experiments - yet one largely overlooked by the Milgram literature. In hundreds of interviews conducted immediately after each experiment, participants sought to justify their actions, often doing so by normalizing the situation as benign, albeit uncomfortable. Examining 91 archived recordings of these interviews from several experimental conditions, we find four recurrent accounts for continuation, each used more frequently by 'obedient' than 'defiant' participants. We also discuss three accounts for discontinuation used by 'defiant' participants. Contrary to what a leading contemporary theory of Milgramesque behaviour - engaged followership - would predict, 'obedient' participants, in the minutes immediately following the experiment, did not tend to explain themselves by identifying with science. Rather, they justified compliance in several distinct and not entirely consistent ways, suggesting that multiple social psychological processes were at work in producing Milgram's 'obedient' outcome category.
我们从语言和话语的民族方法论视角出发，研究了一个对解释社会心理学家斯坦利·米尔格拉姆经典“服从”实验中行为至关重要的数据源——然而，这一数据源在米尔格拉姆文献中基本上被忽视了。在每次实验后立即进行的数百次访谈中，参与者试图为自己的行为辩护，他们常常通过将这种情况正常化为良性的、尽管不舒服的方式来做到这一点。我们研究了来自几个实验条件的 91 个存档访谈录音，发现了四种持续参与的常见解释，其中“服从”参与者比“反抗”参与者更频繁地使用这些解释。我们还讨论了“反抗”参与者用于停止参与的三种解释。与当代米尔格拉姆行为的主导理论——参与式追随——所预测的相反，“服从”参与者在实验结束后的几分钟内并没有倾向于通过认同科学来解释自己。相反，他们以几种不同的、不完全一致的方式为遵守行为辩护，这表明在产生米尔格拉姆的“服从”结果类别时，有多个社会心理过程在起作用。
