Abstract
In his obedience studies, Milgram noticed that some participants, while remaining fully obedient, attempted to help the victim of painful electric shocks by vocally signaling the correct answer. However, there is still no systematic description of these more subtle forms of noncompliance. We analyzed this phenomenon by the systematic coding of the indirect noncompliant behaviors recorded in the videos of a previous Milgram-like study and explored the correlations between values and indirect noncompliance. Results revealed that indirect noncompliance was observed when the ostensible shocks were unambiguously damaging (labeled "strong shocks" and associated with a vocal expression of great pain). It was also shown that the more participants valued hard work, the less they tried to help subtly the victim.
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Acknowledgment
We would like to thank Christophe Nick and Warren Boubon for their contribution to this study.
Notes
1. The only condition that was not pooled was the host-withdrawal condition (‘experimenter absence’), considered to be less relevant because no authority was present.
2. Other measures were also taken, such as a short version of the Big five (see Bègue et al., Citation2015, for a full presentation).
3. We did not include one value of the 2008 Value Survey Questionnaire (thrift) because of its low relevance and space constraints.
4. For more information on the correlates of obedience, see Bègue et al. (Citation2015).