USING PERSON PERCEPTION VIGNETTE METHODOLOGIES TO UNCOVER THE SYMBOLIC MEANINGS OF TEACHER BEHAVIORS IN THE MILGRAM PARADIGM

Behavior in the Milgram paradigm is rich with meanings for the identit ies of all three interactants-experimenter, teacher, and learner. The desire to construct desirable self-images and social impressions is am ong the causal forces driving behavior in the Milgram paradigm. Americ an college students valued disobedient teachers over obedient teachers , brit they also valued polite disobedience over defiant disobedience. It is not only necessary to find the will to disobey the experimenter , it is also necessary to find a socially appropriate way to disobey. Russian participants' perceptions of teachers who were politely obedie nt, politely, disobedient, and defiantly disobedient differed only in an interaction with the participants' SES. Russian participants looked to the hierarchical structure of the social situation (experimenter, teacher, learner) and not the behavior of individual teachers when the y assigned responsibility for the learner's shocks. The person-percept ion vignette methodologies used in the present study can tap the concl usions of the automatic inferences that create the symbolic meanings o f behaviors in the Milgram paradigm. The range of mediating mechanisms necessary to explain the shock-delivering lever presses in the Milgra m paradigm includes some that fall outside the ''obedience'' metaphor in general and Milgram's ''Agentic State'' in particular. Behaviors ob served in the conte,ut of the Milgram ''Obedience'' Paradigm are, at o nce, the most visible, puzzling, and unimaginable acts quantified in e xperimental social psychology.