Milgram’s obedience study

Explain the key aspects of the procedure of Milgram’s study of obedience

• 40 US men given role of teacher through fixed draw

• Ordered by experimenter to shock learner when they made a mistake in a word recall task

• Shocks increased 15V with each mistake up to 450V

Explain the findings of the baseline variation

• 65% went to the top of the shock scale (450V)

• 100% went to 300V

• Many participants showed signs of stress and objected but continued anyway

• Prior survey suggested only 3% would obey

Explain what conclusions can be drawn from the baseline variation of the experiment

• People are much more likely to obey than we think

• People underestimate the impact of situation on behaviour and overestimate the impact of personality

Identify:

• where the location variation took place

• obedient %

• why obedience changed

• run-down office block

• Obedience dropped to 47.5%

• Business lacked authority of science present at Yale

Identify:

• procedure of the proximity variation

• Obedience %

• Why the obedience changed

• teacher and learner in the same room

• Obedience dropped to 40%

• Teacher could see the learner’s suffering