Milgrams research into obedience (1963) - AO3

Generalisability

A weakness of Milgram's Original study (1963) is an androcentric and ethnocentric sample of 40 men aged 20-50 from an individualistic country, U.S. This isn’t representative of females or different collectivist countries, therefore results of obedience levels are not valid.

Reliability

Milgram's study is reliable because the laboratory method is standardised, for example the verbal prods “you must continue” and a standardised script were read aloud by the experimenter. This study is repeated to test consistency - experiment 7. 10 and 13

Applications

Milgram’s (1963) study has provided explanations to real-life situations and human behaviour, as 65% of participants obeyed the authority figure by electrocuting up to 450V, which was also seen during WW2 when soldiers obeyed orders from Hitler (authority figure) to harm other human beings.

Ecological, task and internal validity

Milgram’s (1963) experiment lacks ecological and task validity as it doesn’t reflect real life scenarios, such as being in a laboratory ( controlled environment with an authoritative figure wearing a coat), therefore results cannot be applied to real life activities. Similarly,  electrocuting a learner for an incorrect work pair recall is an artificial task and cannot be applied to real life settings.

The Milgram study has high internal validity because it was a laboratory experiment, situational variables such as proximity, other people, legitimacy of authority and support were all controlled and standardised, therefore a cause ( authority figure) and effect ( obedience to instructions) can be established.

Ethics

Milgram’s study was unethical as there was a lack of fully informed consent, and participants were deceived because they were told the study was about ‘memory and learning’ not obedience, but this was necessary to avoid demand characteristics – the participants were unaware of the true aim and therefore behaved more naturally, increasing the internal validity and cause and effect.