4. Physical Closeness Matters: The strength of the authority of the experimenter
was found to be higher the closer the teacher was to the experimenter.
In addition, there is the Milgram Prediction Error: It was shown that predictions
(done by psychiatrists, graduate students and faculty in the behavioral sciences, college
sophomores, and middle-class adults) underestimate the rate of obedience to authority
by a factor of a hundred (Milgram, 1974)! This Milgram Prediction Error, which remains
the same, keeps organizations from addressing the issue of how to protect against
erroneous authority.
THE DIFFICULTY OF CHALLENGING AN ERRONEOUS CAPTAIN
There are similarities between the Milgram experimental situation and the
behavior in the cockpit during distress. We make a simple correspondence between the
Milgram experiment and the cockpit dynamics: the role of the experimenter is taken by
the erroneous captain, the teacher is the first officer, and the harm to the learner and
everybody else is the airplane crashing.
Observers of behavior in the aviation field have noted the tendency of the
captain-first officer relationship to be too authoritarian in many instances. Ginnett (1993)
writes about the tendency of the first officer not to question the captain (here, and later
in other examples, I have inserted the applicable findings of Milgram, mentioned above,
in square brackets):
The authority dynamic surrounding the role of the captain must be
extremely powerful....[and] has resulted in crewmembers not speaking
up when necessary [Hesitant Challenging]. . . . This inclination may also