Talk:Authority bias

Review of sources
In the course of doing research on other articles, I wondered if anyone had made any connection between Obedience to Authority and Cognitive bias. Since the latter only emerged in the 1970s, Milgram's experiments did not fit within the current paradigm of cognitive psychology which includes the latter. I was doing my BA in Psych in the late 60s, so this was a hot topic at the time, and I later read Milgram's 1974 book, including it as a major reference in a long paper I wrote for my MA. It is difficult to connect obedience to implicit bias, since it was generally noted that subjects were fully aware that they were acting contrary to their own beliefs by continuing to administer shocks. Subjects who later stated reasons for obeying were constructing post hoc justifications. The experiments could not be replicated to test other theories, since one outcome of the original study was to change the rules under which deception can be used in psychology experiments. Obedience fits more into the paradigm of evolutionary psychology, the deference given to legitimate authority, as carriers of cultural knowledge, being adaptive.

I find the inclusion of "The Middle Way" a self-published book on Buddhist philosophy as a source problematical, and unnecessary since the sentence it supports needs no reference beyond Milgram, and a secondary source reviewing the lasting impact of his work would be better.

And then, there is the paper that give its name to this article, which although having been written by two PhD's in Behavioral Economics, apparently was not published in a peer-reviewed journal but presented at a conference and posted on the Academia.edu website. In addition, the paper finds different results in different countries, pointing to a cultural rather than psychological processes. I also find the methodology questionable: using data from the editing of WP articles by "regular editors" vs admins as indicative to deference to authority.

Although a case might be made for the existence of an Authority bias, these referenced have not done so and I cannot find any by searching my university library for the term.

--WriterArtistDC (talk) 18:17, 3 April 2017 (UTC)