Obedience

Stanley Milgram

Stanley Milgram designed a procedure that could be used to assess obedience levels

Rooted from the desire to discover the pressure German Nazi’s faced in WW2, and if they felt remorse for the holocaust.

Baseline procedure (Milgram) (1)

Recruited 40 male American participants supposedly for study on memory

 

Each participant arrived at Milgram’s lab and drew lots with a confederate for their role.

• A confederate was always the learner while the true participant was always the ‘teacher’ (always planned)

• An ‘experimenter (always a confederate) wore a lab coat and sat in the corner to observe

• The teacher could hear but not see the learner

 

The teacher gave the learner an increasingly severe ‘electric shock’ every time he made a mistake on the task. The shocks increased in 15 volt steps up to 450 volts.

 

The shocks where fake but the shock machine was labelled to make them look increasingly severe.

Baseline procedure (Milgram) (2)

If the teacher wished to stop, the experimenter used a sequence of verbal prods

Prod 1 =  ‘please continue’ or ‘please go on’

Prod 2 =  ‘the experiment requires that you continue’

Prod 3 = ‘ it is absolutely essential that you continue’

Prod 4 = ‘ you have no other choice, you must go on’

Baseline findings (Milgram) (1)

Quantitative

Every participant delivered all the shocks up to 300 volts.

 

12.5% of participant stopped at 300 volts (5 participants)

 

65% of participants continued to 450 volts (highest level)

 

Qualitative

Observations = participants showed signs of extreme tension. Three participants had ‘full blown uncontrollable seizures’ and others experienced shiversand digging into flesh.

Baseline findings (Milgram) (2)

Before the study Milgram asked 14 psychology students to predict how they thought the naïve participants would respond. The students estimated no more than 3% would continue to 450 volts (so the baseline findings where unexpected)

After the study, participants where debriefed. They where also sent a follow up questionnaire which showed the 84% were glad they had participated.

Conclusions (Milgram)

We obey legitimate authority even if that means our behaviour causes harm to someone else.

 

Certain situational factors encourage obedience

A03 - ethically replicated (greybeard)

One strength is that Milgram‘s findings have been successfully replicated showing high external validity. Using a more ethical ‘obedience lite’ method in which the procedure stopped after which the procedure is stopped after 150 volts. (The first 10 switches)

 

Greybeard,  used this procedure and found that 90% of participants obeyed orders up to 150 volts (this was true with human or robot experimenter)

 

This procedure support Milgram’s original findings about high levels of obedience to authority.

A03 - lack of internal validity (demand characteristics) (perry)

Perry discovered that only half of the participants believed the shocks were real they were ‘play-acting’

• Perry analysed Milgram’s archived tape recordings. Made several discoveries that undermine the validity of Milgram’s findings and conclusions.

• The ‘experimenter’ often went ‘off script’ for example would vary the four prods and use them excessively

• Participants often voiced their suspicions about the shocks, perry concluded that most of Milgram’s participants realised that the shocks were fake.

 

This suggests that participants may have been responding to demand characteristics

A03 - social identitiy theory, participants appeal to the science and importance of research (Haslam and Reicher)

Haslam and Reicher, found that every participant given the first three prods obeyed the experimenter, but those given the fourth prod disobeyed.

 

According to the social identity theory, the first of three prods required identification with the science of the research, but the fourth prod required blind obedience.

 

This shows that the findings are best explained in terms of identification with scientific aims (one of Milgram’s claims) and not as blind obedience to authority.