The Best News About Friendship
Your most intimate connections are interwoven into your character
If you consider the boundaries in friendship, What does this mean for you? Would you do anything to help a friend, even if it required the risk of putting yourself in danger? Would you base your answer on a friend’s request for more cautious reasons?
Perhaps one of your best acquaintances has encountered an issue with their childcare issues that prevent them from attending a crucial family celebration scheduled for an entire weekend. You’ve already planned your ideas for the weekend, plans that you’ve been looking forward to for a while. You could change your plans if you wanted to assist your friend. What should you do?
A Classic Experiment That Tests the Limits of Friendship
You’ve probably heard of some of the “obedience” experiments conducted in the 1960s by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram and published in his 1974 book Obedience to Authority. The structure of his studies was based on this basic idea. Participants in the studies believed that they were to instruct the “Learner,” a hired employee of Milgram who would give them (phony) electrical shocks if they committed mistakes. They were told that the “Experimenter” (not Milgram, but a worker) directed the “Teacher” (the participant) to administer the shocks each when a “Learner” made a mistake. It was possible to find 19 different versions of the study published in the book. They varied in the social aspects of the scenario.
The majority of interpretations for this experiment suggest that it is proof of the possibility that ordinary people are influenced to follow orders given by a person in charge, even when the orders are intended to hurt someone else. But, as per an analysis of the work of Milgram by a non-researcher, Nafsika Athanassoulis (living in Berlin, Germany), the degree of obedience varied widely based upon the particular conditions of the test. In contrast to proving the position of a situationist, which is that someone would not intentionally hurt an individual if commanded to do this, she believes the findings “rather than confirming the situationist claim… [it ]… offers evidence of dispositions affecting behavior.”
Additionally, many people think that Milgram’s work shows that the “gross immorality” of harming someone else could be triggered by a “tiny factor,” such as whether the person experimenting had on a grey jacket and was carrying a clipboard the causes of the immoral act aren’t small in any way. She frames Milgram’s research as a study of “obedience under pressure.” According to her clarify, “Milgram also knew from earlier runs of the experiment that participants would feel tension at hurting innocent others, and he needed mechanisms to defuse this tension before it stopped the participants from obeying” (p. 64). Friendships were among the “defusing” mechanisms.
Friendships as Defusing Dispositions
Before looking at how Milgram employed friendships to see how he could lessen obedience, it is essential to understand how close relationships can alter how participants behave in this study. Though you may not consider it an individual trait (i.e., it’s an ongoing characteristic), Athanassoulis argues that this is precisely how friendship should be described. Friendships are unique relationships that develop since you and your friend have specific characteristics, and these friendships endure because you nurture them and appreciate the friendships you have with them. Friendships aren’t made; in other words, it’s not just with anyone.
Citing the previous author, Athanassoulis notes that friendship is “a long-term project which has a very characteristic nature” (p. 70). The bond has also instilled trust and understanding of how your companion can “actively shape your character.”
Since dispositions are a factor, your friendship with someone else will influence your perception of and reaction to events. If you’re not thinking only about yourself, you’re contemplating how an event could affect your friend. However much pressure someone puts on you to sabotage or hurt your friend, this attitude should enable you to remain firm to maintain your friend’s security.
How Did Friendship Affect the Milgram Experiments
In the Milgram experiment, the boundaries of friendship were examined in a specific situation that was only discovered when Yale University opened the lab’s archives. The condition was referred to by the name relationship Condition (RC) or Condition 24; the Teachers and learners were picked due to their friendship for at least two years (e.g., neighbors, parents-in-law, or coworkers).
Compared with the 65 percent obedience rate typically reported for Milgram studies (which was not the norm throughout the entire study), the RC yielded an average of 15 percent. Milgram’s notes regarding the RC mention that this was “as powerful a demonstration of disobedience than [sic] can be found” (p. 53). There were reports on this RC results in published literature after its discovery within Yale archives. Yale archives, however, its results are not often discussed and are often ignored in the textbooks covering the subject of social psychology.
The participants’ debriefings showed how crucial friendships influenced their decision to follow the Experimenter’s instructions. One teacher tried to assist the student by highlighting the correct answers. However, he stopped just before the maximum amount of “volts” was issued as punishment. Another teacher resisted by stating, “It may be important to you but not that important to me–for friendship–anyway” (p. 70). Another person simply said, “This is my neighbor,” without further details. Another mentioned the “horrible feeling” associated with being disappointed by someone with whom he shares an ongoing relationship.
In the most extreme instance of disobedience, an Experimenter left the study. “Tracy, operating under real” (i.e., not a scripted) “conditions of authority, that is being employed and paid to do as his boss asked, defied authority for a friend.”
