To test compliance with authority, a classical experiment in social psychology requires subjects to administer increasingly painful electric shocks to seemingly helpless victims who agonize in an adjacent room.* Each subject earns a score between 0 and 30, depending on the point at which the subject refuses to comply with authority— an investigator, dressed in a white lab coat, who orders the administration of increasingly intense shocks. A score of 0 signifies the subject’s unwillingness to comply at the very outset, and a score of 30 signifies the subject’s willingness to comply completely with the experimenter’s orders.
Ignore the very real ethical issues raised by this type of experiment, and assume that you want to study the effect of a “committee atmosphere” on compliance with authority. In one condition, shocks are administered only after an affirmative decision by the committee, consisting of one real subject and two associates of the investigator, who act as subjects but in fact merely go along with the decision of the real subject. In the other condition, shocks are administered only after an affirmative decision by a solitary real subject. A total of 12 subjects are randomly assigned, in equal numbers, to the committee condition (X1) and to the solitary condition (X2). A compliance score is obtained for each subject. Use t to test the null hypothesis at the .05 level of significance.
COMPLIANCE SCORES
COMMITTEE SOLITARY
2............. 3
5............... 8
20............. 7
15........... 10
4............. 14
10............. 0