interests,” elicited variations between 22 and 76 %. That these statements carry over to
actual differences in behavior seems reasonable.
2. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY FINDINGS: THE DIFFICULTY OF CHALLENGING
STRONG AUTHORITY
Excessively obedient behavior in the presence of authority was found in the
psychology laboratory by Stanley Milgram over thirty-five years ago (Milgram, 1974). In
these experiments, a subject, the teacher, is asked by the experimenter to give
electrical shocks to a confederate, the learner. The stated purpose of the experiment is
to understand how punishment affects memory recall. The learner first fakes discomfort
and as the fake electrical shocks increase to dangerous levels, he suddenly becomes
quiet. There are four of Milgram’s findings that can help shed light on inadequate
monitoring and challenging in the airplane cockpit:
1. Excessive Obedience: Milgram found that most people can be made to inflict
intense pain and even kill the learner.
2. Hesitant Challenging: The teacher’s objections to giving the learner electrical
shocks were often hesitant and easily overruled by the experimenter’s replies, such as
telling the teacher that “the experiment requires that you continue.”
3. Lack of Monitoring: The teacher accepts the authority’s definition of the
situation, which does not include the choice of disobedience but only the necessity of
continued obedience. Indeed, in the Milgram experiment not one out of almost a
thousand teacher-subjects came up with an interpretation leading them to call the police
or free the learner (Zimbardo, 1974).