Following orders makes us feel less responsible for our actions

Coercive instructions make people feel less responsible for the outcomes of their actions, as opposed to merely saying that they are less responsible, researchers from UCL and the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium have found. Society holds individuals responsible for their own actions. However, individuals sometimes claim reduced responsibility because they were "only obeying orders". This defence is often viewed with scepticism, because the defendant has a clear motive of avoiding punishment. Scientific studies, such as the well-known "Milgram experiment", focussed on how readily people comply with coercive orders, but did not systematically investigate the experience of being coerced. The new study, published in Current Biology and funded by the European Research Council, set out to investigate this experience. In one experiment, two participants took turns to administer a financial penalty to one another, receiving a small financial benefit themselves when they did so.