milgrams study, situational variables

3 ethical issues

Deception, debriefing, protection from harm

How does proximity affect obedience in milgram

• Decreasing proximity allows people to feel less responsible for their actions

• Increasing proximity of learner and teacher (in same room) decreased obedience to 40% as they can directly see learners pain.

Increasing proximity where teacher forced learners hand on shocked plate decreased obedience to 30%

How does location affect obedience in milgram

When experiment was conducted at Yale uni, participants said it gave them confidence about the people involved as it was a professional location.

When experiment was in a run down office, obedience dropped to 48% giving maximum shock

How does uniform affect obedience in milgram and strength- support from Bickman

• uniform encourages obedience as it’s a symbol of authority- in migrants variation when experimenter was replaced by another participant, obedience dropped to 20%

• Bickman did field experiment where 2 confederates dressed in street wear , 1 in security guard uniform. Showed people were 2x more likely to obey confederate in uniform.

• Study had high mundane realism as it wasn’t done in a lab setting so people less likely to show demand characteristics.

• Showed support towards milgrams findings about uniform affecting obedience as it conveys authority causing people to conform out of pressure.

What was the aim of milgrams study

To see how far one remains obedient in high pressure situations

What was the procedure of milgrams study

40 American men volunteered taking part in a memory study- they were decepted.

Volunteer was always teacher and confederate always learner, decided by a rigged draw. 1 confederate dressed in a white coat. Teacher tested learner on remembrance words, every wrong answer teacher gave learner a shock. Shocks were fake but teacher didn’t know that. There was a screen separating them.

Shocks increased after very wrong answer

Findings of milgrams study

Every participant gave shocks up to 300v. 12.5% stopped at 300v and 65% continued to highest V.

Participants sowedsignsofextremetension,sweating, tremble

Shows ordinary people are obedient even when asked to do something going against their own morality. Milgram said it isn’t evil people committing acts but people who are obeying orders.

Weakness of milgrams study (ethical issues)

Deception and protection from harm.

Participants decieved into thinking study was about memory when it was about obedience. Leads to participants having. No informed consent as they dont know true aim of study. However participants had to be deceived to. Give accurate results as if they knew aim of study, could haves shown demand characteristics and not natural.

Participants suffered from high levels of. Anxiety, sweating causing them to have no protection from harm. However milgram debriefed participants after, told them their actions were normal so their. Feelings were minimise

Strength of milgrams study (research support) Beauvious

• His findings were replicated in a French documentary about reality TV (Beauvois et al)

• Participants thought they were taking part in an episode of a game-show (Le Jeu de la mort)

• They were paid to give fake electrical shocks ordered by presenter to other participants who were actors

• 80% gave max shock of 460v- behaviour was identica, to Milligrams, supports his findings that they weren’t due to special circumstances

However, most of these studies replicated only in westernised cultures which are culturally similar to USA so other countries may react different to obedience. This means his study cant be generalised to whole population

Miranda found obedience rate 90% of spanish students.- support

Weakness of milgrams study (lacks internal validity) can use this for evaluating situational variables

• Orne and Holland beleived many participants worked out procedure was fake due to the extra manipulation e.g. replacing experimenter with member of public- even Mike ram said this was obvious

• Participants may have shown demand Characteristics affecting the reliability of results. Shows it’s unclear if results were due to experiment or participant acting accordingly.

• However, film footage shows signs of stress, 65% of participants obeyed which is too big for them to all be faking. 35% didn’t shock showing large amount believed it

Conclusion of milgram study

Given useful info and findings about reasonings for obedience. Cody benefit analysis shows for the study, benefits outweigh costs as study is still talked about today and used as a baseline for other experiments.

Variation of milgrams study (agentic state)

Personmoves from autonomous state where person sees themselves responsible for their own actions and moves to agentic state where person sees themselves as an agent carrying it another persons wishes. This shift is called agentic shift

In milgrams study, participants were told experimenter had full responsibility so they could ac as an agent, carrying out experimenters orders.

Variations of milgrams study (binding factors)

This allows a person to ignore the damaging effects of their behaviour to reduce the moral strain they’re feeling.

Variations in milgrams study (legitimacy authority)

Participant assumes someone in charge that’s an authoritative figure knows what they’re doing and agrees with them.

If an orderis harmful it must be in an institution and dosent need to be respected. In milgrams study obedience was still high in a run down lab