Engaged Followership
The account in which willingness to continue in a Milgram-style procedure depends on identifying with the project and the person leading it, not on orders alone.
What it is
In a Milgram-style analogue with no shocks, Haslam, Reicher and Birney varied the experimenter's prods between participants. Continuation and completion rose as the prods appealed more to scientific goals and fell as they became more like orders. In a later restaging with actors, shock levels were strongly tied to identification with the experimenter rather than the learner.
In effect
In the article on the Milgram experiment, it is the newest reading of why participants continued.
What it does not say
The analogue study used no shocks, and the restaging used actors. It does not say that orders never matter, only that appeals to a shared goal did more in these designs.
Sources
- Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., & Birney, M. E. (2014). Nothing by mere authority: Evidence that in an experimental analogue of the Milgram paradigm participants are motivated not by orders but by appeals to science. Journal of Social Issues, 70(3), 473-488.
- Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., & Millard, K. (2015). Shock treatment: Using immersive digital realism to restage and re-examine Milgram's obedience to authority research. PLoS ONE, 10(3), e0109015.