Some effects of guilt on compliance.

Abstract

Two experiments studied conditions under which compliance will be increased. Experiment I showed that guilt (induced by having subjects deliver painful electric shocks to a confederate) will sharply increase compliance. Status of the confederate and presence of a witness had no effect. Expriment II differ-entiated among possible explanations for this effect, and suggested that guilt, rather than sympathy or a desire to make restitution, was the critical variable. Subjects who had observed but not delivered the shocks did not comply. Compliance was highest when the request was made by someone who had observed the subject deliver the shocks, but was not himself the victim. Most research concerned with how to get a person to comply has been carried out in situations where there is a great deal of ex-ternal pressure for compliance. In many studies, the extent of the pressures is ob-vious (e.g., Asch, 1951; Deutsch & Gerard, 1955). Other studies have used the immense pressure of the experimenter-subject relation-ship. For example, Milgram's (1964) re-markable demonstrations of obedience are all carried out in the context of an experimenter ordering a subject to comply. In these, and in most other studies of compliance, the focus has been on variables affecting compliance within this framework of strong external pres-sure. The research described here studies how one can get compliance without these external pressures. This is of interest for several rea-sons. First of all, it is often necessary, for financial, ethical, practical, or other reasons, to apply only minimal external pressure when attempting to obtain compliance. Second, it has become clear from much of the research stemming from dissonance theory (e.g., Brehm