Outline a study into obedience

Milgram's theory of agency and factors affecting obedience clearly outlines several factors important in affecting an individual's level of obedience. He tested whether the proximity between the confederate researcher or the confederate learner would affect the participant teacher's obedience towards whether or not they would administer the "shocks" to the learner. Another variation of the experiment that Milgram did was that he changed the location of where the experiment took place, and tried to find whether this would affect a participant's level of obedience. He found a great measurable difference between the level of obedience of the participant when in a prestigious university setting compared to a run-down office building, with the prestige of the location increasing obedience. Changing the uniform of the confederate researcher in variations of the study also changed an individual's obedience, with a professional outfit leading to greater obedience than a poorly dressed "researcher". These factors all show that there societal factors that can influence an individual's will to obey other figures, and explains why certain people can command greater obedience from their followers. Practical applications of this knowledge could be that phenomena in history such as adherence to the Nazi regime can be explained through explanations found by Milgram, as the uniforms they wore, the proximity they had to their troops and the authority their roles had all would have increased the obedience of people under them.