Milgram’s Research into Obedience

A01-Obedience

• A form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order. 

• The person issuing the order is usually a figure of authority

A01-Milgram’s Research

Aim: To investigate if individuals will follow orders given by an authority figure, even when doing so could cause harm to another person.

A01-Procedure

• The Task: The learner had to remember word pairs.

• The Shocks: The teacher delivered fake electric shocks for wrong answers.

• Voltage Levels: Shocks started at 15 volts and increased by 15 volts each time, up to a lethal 450 volts.

• Audio Cues: Recordings of cries of pain and banging played when shocks were given.

• Authority Pressure: A man in a lab coat gave strict verbal prods (like "You must go on") if the teacher hesitated.

• Time Limit: Teachers had only 5 to 6 seconds to give each shock.

A01-Findings

• All the participants gave shocks up to 300V.   

• 63% of the participants continued to give shocks up to 450V – even though the confederate/learner fell silent at 300V and even though they knew that 450V was a lethal electric shock.

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A03-Research Support

• Burger (2009) used an ‘Obedience Lite’ approach to avoid the ethical issues in Milgram's procedure - once participants reached the 150-volt shock level, the data collection ended. Any participants that had continued to this point was classed as fully obedient, because at 79% of those that went beyond 150 volts continued to the end.

• Milgram's original data, roughly 79%–82.5% of people who went past 150 volts continued all the way to the maximum voltage (450V), making 150V a key "point of no return"…

A03-Internal Validity

• She listened to tapes of Milgram’s participants and reported that only about half of them believed the shocks were real, of which ⅔ were disobedient, which means participants may actually have been responding to demand characteristics.

• Evidence from Perry (2013) suggests that only about half of the participants believed the shocks were real and most of these participants were disobedient. In a recent article, Perry et al. (2020) cited testimony from one of Milgram’s assistants (Taketo Murata) who reported that participants classified as having ‘not fully believed’ administered more shocks than those classified as having ‘fully believed’, suggesting that participants may have been ‘play-acting’.

A03-Ethical Issues

• Researchers Criticised Milgram for his apparent lack of concern for the well-being of his research participants. 

• For example, Milgram deceived his participants by telling them they were involved in a study on the effects of punishment on learning, which made it impossible for participants to give informed consent to participating. Part of giving informed consent is allowing participants the right to withdraw if at any point they change their mind about participating

A03-Alternative Interpretations

• Another issue is that Milgram’s conclusions about blind obedience may not be justified.

  
  

• Haslam et al. (2014) showed that Milgram’s participants obeyed when the Experimenter delivered the first three verbal prods, however every participant who was given the fourth prod without exception disobeyed (‘You have on other choice, you must go on’).

  
  

• According to social identity theory (SIT), participants in Milgram’s study only obeyed when they identified with the scientific aims of the research. When they were ordered to blindly obey an authority figure, they refused.