MILGRAM 1963

aim

• test the “germans are different” hypothesis

• suggestion that nazism only happened in germany due to the obedient culture of germany at the time, and nazism wouldn’t happen anywhere else

procedure

• 40 white male volunteers at Yale university

• ppts played role of teacher, confederate played role of learner

• learner strapped to chair of electrodes

• “experiment of memory”

• teacher “shocked” learner when they had a wrong answer. increased by 15v increments

• learner shouted in pain, stopped shouting at 315v

• 4 prods to keep ppts on the task

prods:

1. please continue

2. the experiment requires you to continue

3. it is absolutely essential that you continue

4. you have no other choice but to continue

findings

• colleagues predicted only a few people would go further than 150v

• 65% reached the full 450v

• 100% reached 300v before 12.5% dropped out

• visible signs of distress (nervous laughing, shaking, sweating)

• 3 collapsed with seizures

3 tweaked variables

proximity

location

uniform

proximity

• when teacher and learner were in the same room, the ppts could see the fake consequences, obedience fell from 65% to 40%

• when experimenter rang in the orders, obedience fell to 20.5%

location

milgram switched his study from yale university to a run-down office block, obedience fell from 65% to 46.5%

uniform

experimenter wore own clothes (as opposed to a white lab coat). obedience fell from 65% to 20%

debriefing

• milgram assured ppts that their reaction was normal for what they had experienced

• could be argued milgram didn’t go far enough to negate the trauma his ppts suffered

• debriefing became a rule later in 1960s, milgram was ahead of his time

weaknesses

• ethnocentric and androcentric, lacks population validity

• lacked experimental realism, low ecological validity (plus may have caught on)

• volunteer sampling= volunteer personality, lack population validity

• offensive

strengths

• replicated several times

• valid, reliable

• internal validity is high, standardised

• practical application

• research support

sheridan and king

• puppy given increasingly severe electric shocks when it made a mistake in a learning task

• shocks were real but not fatal, puppy trained to help and show distress

• 54% male, 100% female delivered what they thought were fatal shocks