Obedience to authority

What is obedience?

To comply with the demands of someone who you see as an authority figure

What was the aim of Milgram’s research and the social context behind the study?

The aim was to study obedience as a behaviour. The social context was that the Holocaust had taken place during WW2. It was believed that this could only have happened due to a large number of people obeying.

Describe the sample used in the study.

40 males aged 20-50, varying in occupation and education. Volunteer sample - recruited via newspaper and direct mail. Paid $4.50 and told they would be paid just for turning up.

Where did the study take place?

Yale uni

Who were the three people involved in the study? How were the roles allocated?

Three roles - experimenter, learner and teacher. Learner and teacher were “randomly allocated” by drawing the roles from a hat. However, both pieces of paper said ‘teacher’ and the roles were fixed by the experimenter

What was the participant told the study was about?

• What effects different people can have on one another as teachers and learners.

• What effect punishment will have on learning

The participants were asked to read word pairs to the learner and to punish him with an electric shock whenever they got an answer wrong. The shocks ranged from 15-450 volts, going up in 15-volt increments. However only one real shock was given during the study.

Give brief details of this shock and why was it given?

A sample shock of 45v was given to the teacher to demonstrate the intensity of the shocks and prove that the machine did work

The actual experiment was not whether punishment affected learning, but whether the learner would obey the experimenter. How did the experiment try and convince the learner to continue?

• Please continue

• The experiment requires you to continue

• It is absolutely essential that you continue

• You have no other choice, you must continue

Before the study Milgram discussed the study with Yale professors with a background in psychology and asked them to predict how many people would obey to the maximum of 450 volts? What was the mean percentage given?

• all respondents predicted that an insignificant minority would go through to the end of the shock series

• the mean was 1.2%

What signs of extreme tension where observed on the participants?

• pps sweat, trembled, stuttered, bit lips, dug their finger nails into the hands

• nervous laughing in 14/40 subjects

• 3 pps had seizures

How many people continued to 450 volts?

26 pps= 65%

Evaluation of Milgram: Hofling

P - A strength of Milgram’s research is that there is supporting evidence.

E - Hofling et al. (1966) found that real nurses in a real hospital would administer a drug (which they were unfamiliar with) if ordered to do so by a doctor via telephone. 21 out of 22 nurses administered the fake drug to patients.

E - The nurses obeyed an authority despite hospital rules prohibiting them from taking telephone orders, administering drugs not on the permitted list, and doing so without a signed order from a doctor. 

L - Therefore, this study increases the validity of Milgram’s findings as it was conducted in a real hospital setting and adds to the external validity of Milgram’s research. 

Evaluation of Milgram: ethics

• Participants were deceived

  • They were told the allocation of roles was random (it wasn’t)

  • They believed Mr Wallace to be a real participant (he was a confederate)

  • They believed the shocks to be real (they weren’t)

• However - it could be argued that the deception was necessary for the internal validity of the study, and Milgram debriefed the participants after the study- 80% of respondents said there should be more experiments like Milgram’s and 75% said they had learnt something of personal value from their experience

Evaluation of Milgram: Nature vs Nurture: Dispositional vs Situational

The Situational Argument (Nurture): Milgram argued that social context is the primary driver of obedience. His research showed that variables such as proximity, location, and uniform significantly altered obedience rates, suggesting that environmental factors, rather than personality, dictate behaviour.

• The Dispositional Argument (Nature): Adorno’s theory of the Authoritarian Personality suggests that obedience is a personality trait established in childhood through a harsh, punitive upbringing.

• The Interactionist View: Many psychologists argue that focusing solely on situational factors "hugely oversimplifies" human behaviour. For instance, in Milgram’s original study, 35% of participants resisted the pressure to obey, suggesting that internal dispositional factors must play a role in how individuals respond to the same situation.