7. Milgram’s study of obedience

Aims

• to research how far people who go in obeying an instruction even it involved harming another person

Procedure

• participants

• What happened at the beginning of the experiment

• What happened during the experiment

• Volunteers believed they were taking part in a study into the effects of punishment on learning

• Participants were 40 males aged 20-50 from a range of occupations

• At the beginning of the experiment they were introduced to another participant, who was actually a confederate, and they drew straws to determine their roles, but this was fixed so the confederate was always the learner

• The learner was then taken to an adjoining room, strapped to a chair and attached to electrodes so he could receive shocks .

• The learner is read word pairs and the teacher asks the learner to recall it’s lair from a list of 4 choices

• The teacher is told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time from 15V to 450V (danger). However the confederate isn’t actually receiving any shocks and the protests are prerecorded

• The learner purposefully mainly gave wrong answers and the teacher had to give an electric shock in response

• When the teacher refused to administer the shock the experimenter gave prods to encourage them to continue

Results

• how many ps gave up to 300V

• How many ps gave up to 450V

• Physical responses of ps

• all 40 participants obeyed up to 300 volts

• 65% of participants gave shocks up to 450V, the other 35% stopped before this

• Many participants showed signs of tension und nervousness- trembling, stuttering, digging fingernails into flesh- not enjoying it even though obeying. 3 experienced seizures

Conclusion

• Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human

• Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up

AO3 -VALIDITY

P- Research may lack population validity

E- enthnocentric - only used American males, people in other cultures may not be socialised to obey hierarchy in the same way

E- for example, In Germany, where more emphasis is placed on authority and hierarchy obedience rates may be higher, whereas in Australia which tend to focus in indendence and individuality obedience may be lower

Lacks internal validity -ps may have worked out the aims, realised that the shocks were fake and were similarly playing along

L- cannot generalise findings and conclusions across all groups

AO3- ethics

P- ethical issues

E- deception- participants told the experiment was researching punishment in learning not obedience. Could not give their informed consent- not told true aims

E- right to withdraw- even though participants were told that they could withdraw at any time, some felt that they did not have this right because of the nature of the experiment- experimenter’s prods made it difficult to leave

Also protection from harm- ps became anxious - cannot be replicated due to physical and psychological harm

L- ethical issues

AO3- reliability

P- other research into obedience has found similar results

E- Hofling et al.- field study using a naive sample of 22 nurses

• Each nurse was telephoned by a doctor they did not know

• The doctor told the nurse to administer an excessive dose of an unfamiliar drug

  • 20 mg of 'Astroten' (the drug was fake and was simply a glucose tablet)

  • the Astroten box clearly stated that the maximum daily dose was 10mg

• 21 out of the 22 nurses obeyed the unethical order, which broke hospital guidelines

• The findings support the idea that harmful acts can be committed by seemingly caring peopl

  L- Thus, Milgram's study has good external validity as similar effects as were observed in his study can be seen in the real world