De-Bias Yourself: Authority Bias and Why We Love a Good Clipboard
“People will tell you anything if you have a clipboard” — J, Alderperson, New Jersey
J is an elected local official in New Jersey (and a friend of mine). As part of their campaign, volunteers went door to door in this small town to canvas voters. After countless hours spent walking and talking, they noticed a distinctive pattern: if a voter was approached by a canvasser with a clipboard, they were more likely to speak candidly and share personal details.
Laughing, they told me about this observation on the phone the other day, and it immediately sparked a connection that will be familiar to anyone who’s taken Psych 101 — the Milgram Experiments.
In 1961 at Yale University, researcher Stanley Milgram crafted and then implemented a series of experiments to better understand people’s obedience to authority figures. Milgram — who was deeply affected by the events of the Holocaust — sought to decode how seemingly nice and normal people could be persuaded to carry out acts of horror and to harm others.
Though not considered ethical today, the experiment had a relatively simple and brilliant design. The subject was led into a room and told to ask another person (hidden from view behind a wall) a question. If the answerer got the question wrong, the subject was…
