Background and aim

1. Link to the theory: Bickman (1974) supports situational factors, because it changes one feature of the situation and watches obedience move.
2. Background: a uniform tells you someone's role and status before they have said a word, so an order from someone in uniform may be followed even when that person holds no real power over you.
3. Aim: to investigate the degree of social power associated with different types of uniform.
4. Hypothesis: members of the public would obey orders more or less depending on the uniform worn by the person giving them.

Method

Design

1. Experiment 1 was a field experiment carried out on the streets of New York.
2. The independent variable was the type of uniform worn by the person giving the order, and the dependent variable was whether the pedestrian obeyed.
3. Independent measures were used, so each pedestrian met one uniform only.
4. It is a field experiment, because the researchers chose which uniform each pedestrian saw while leaving the setting as an ordinary street.

Sample

1. 153 adult pedestrians, judged by eye to be aged 18 to 61.
2. An opportunity sample, meaning whoever happened to be passing and could be approached.
3. Testing ran on weekdays and mainly in the afternoon.

Materials and procedure

1. Three outfits were used: a guard's uniform, a milkman's uniform, and civilian dress with no uniform at all.
2. The person giving the orders was always a white male confederate aged 18 to 20.
3. All four confederates wore all three outfits and were briefed to behave identically, so the effect of the uniform could be separated from the effect of the individual man.
4. Each pedestrian was given one of three orders.
   1. Pick up a paper bag from the ground.
   2. Give a dime to a stranger for parking.
   3. Move to the other side of a bus-stop pole they were already standing at.

Results

1. Experiment 1: whichever of the three orders was used, obedience to the guard was significantly higher than obedience to the civilian.
2. The milkman made no difference: obedience to that uniform was no higher than to civilian dress.
3. Experiments 2 and 3A: obedience was again much higher to the guard, and surveillance made no significant difference, while the students in 3A did not rate the guard as having any more right to give the orders than the other two outfits.
4. Experiment 3B: students did not predict that the guard would get people to obey more.

Conclusions

1. Uniforms that signify authority carry real social power, even when the wearer is acting outside any role that would give them the right to give orders.
2. Wearing a uniform is not enough on its own, because the milkman was obeyed no more than the man in ordinary clothes.
3. People cannot predict their own obedience, because the 189 students in Experiment 3B expected the guard to make no difference yet the pedestrians in the street obeyed him significantly more.
4. How it relates to the theory: obedience changed with the outfit while the person giving the order stayed the same.

Criticisms

1. Strength, high ecological validity: real pedestrians received realistic orders in a real street.
2. Strength, no demand characteristics: nobody knew they were in a study, so the obedience measured was genuine.
3. Strength, good standardisation for a field study: the orders were scripted and the confederates rotated through all three outfits.
4. Weakness, poor control of extraneous variables in Experiments 1 and 2: the weather, how busy the street was and why each person was out could all have changed whether they complied.
5. Weakness, cultural bias: people in a large American city may obey less than people in rural areas with a stronger sense of community, so the findings may not represent behaviour in other countries.
6. Weakness, biased sampling: the confederates may have steered clear of pedestrians who looked aggressive or too important to stop.
7. Weakness, serious ethical problems: the pedestrians were deceived, were not debriefed, could not withdraw their data, and may have been distressed by being stopped in the street.

Turning this into marks

1. When two criticisms are asked for, make them genuinely separate, so pair an ethical problem with a methodological one rather than giving two versions of poor control.
2. Name the milkman condition, because a general statement that uniforms raise obedience does not secure the knowledge mark.
3. Say that Bickman chose which uniform each pedestrian saw, because that is what makes the study a field experiment.
4. The mark most often lost is quoting an obedience figure instead of describing the pattern across the three outfits.