Obedience, Disobedience, and Whistleblowing: Study Review

Introduction: Disobedience and Unjust Authority

The study reviewed here examines whistleblowing and disobedience between individuals in the context of unjust authority. An experimental scenario was set up by the authors in order to determine — from a group of 149 individuals — how many would obey an "unethical request" and how many would refuse and instead blow the whistle on it.

The authors conducted this study because they believe there has not been enough research into the "nature of disobedience to unjust authority." The central question, it seems, is this: who are the whistleblowers, and how are they different from those who go along with unfair, immoral, or unjust demands?

Study Procedure and Experimental Design

The authors explain on page 37 that the whistleblower does not escape consequences simply by revealing a situation that is wrong or unjust; rather, the whistleblower must expect to have "future involvement" with the authorities he or she reported (Bocchiaro, et al., 2012). The authors used a male Dutch experimenter with a "stern" appearance who described an experiment that would clearly entail "great suffering" due to "extended sensory deprivation" (Bocchiaro, 39).

Participants were asked to provide feedback on whether a school should agree to conduct a sensory deprivation test on students. The critical constraint was that in their written feedback they were required to use two of the following four words: "great," "superb," "exciting," or "incredible" (Bocchiaro, 39). The three potential responses available to participants were classified as prosocial, individualist, or competitive.

The Pilot Study and Its Purpose

There were eight pilot tests, all designed to ensure that the procedure was "credible and morally acceptable" to those participating. Some participants in the pilot study actually believed the cover story was real and were genuinely surprised to learn it was a ruse. This validation step was essential to ensuring that the main study's findings reflected authentic behavioral responses rather than reactions to a scenario participants viewed as implausible.

Predicted Versus Actual Participant Behavior

There was a striking difference between what participants predicted and what actually occurred. A separate sample of 138 students from the university were presented with the experimental scenario and asked to imagine themselves in it (Bocchiaro, 41–42). They were asked both what they personally would do and what they believed the average student at their university would likely do.

Among this separate sample asked "what would you do?", only 3.6% said they would certainly obey the stern experimenter. By contrast, 31.9% predicted they would disobey his orders, and a clear majority — 64.5% — believed they would be offended by the deception and would become whistleblowers (Bocchiaro, 42).

When asked to predict how other students would respond, 18.8% believed other students would obey, 43.9% believed other students would disobey, and 37.3% believed other students would become whistleblowers (Bocchiaro, 42).

The actual data told a very different story. Among real participants, 76.5% obeyed the experimenter, only 14.1% disobeyed, and a mere 9.4% blew the whistle on the project (Bocchiaro, 42). This gap between predicted and actual behavior is one of the study's most significant findings and echoes classic research on obedience to authority in social psychology.

Works Cited

Bocchiaro, P., Zimbardo, P.G., and Van Lange, P.A.M. (2012). To defy or not to defy: An experimental study of the dynamics of disobedience and whistle-blowing. Social Influence, 7(1), 35–50.