ABSTRACT
Stephen Gilbert (1985) noticed an interesting fact related to the very nature of the request to press subsequent push buttons of “Milgram’s machine”. Could it be – asked Gilbert – that asking the subject to press subsequent push buttons and administer subsequent punishment is a variant of a multiple use of the “foot in the door” technique (Freedman & Fraser, 1966)? Perhaps the participants in the experiment were so obedient because they agreed to grant previous, relatively small, requests? Gilbert asked the following rhetorical question: what would happen if the subjects were immediately asked to press the push button corresponding to a severe and dangerous electric shock of, e.g. 150 volts? In this chapter, we describe the results of such studies, which we carried out ourselves.
