Obedience

Milgram’s study:

(1963) 40 American male volunteers, participant was teacher and confederate was the learner. There was also an experimenter who was in a lab coat.

Every pps delivered all the shocks up to 300V. 12.5% stopped at 300V and 65% of pps continued to the full 450V meaning they were fully obedient.

Milgram also observed pps showed signs of extreme sweating, nail biting and uncontrollable seizures.

Research support

Hofling (1966) found that nurses would obey to unjustified demands due to the doctors telling them to. 21/25 nurses obeyed. This shows that Milgram’s findings can be applied to outside settings

Low internal and external validity

Milgrams study was done in a lab. Would have good control of variable however lack of external validity as a lab environments very different to a normal everyday setting. It was also an artificial task so demand characteristics possible

Ethical issues

Milgram’s study psychologically harmed his pps for example they were sweating and showed extreme levels of anxiety. This discredits the research as psychology is meant to protect people from psychological harm and milligram did not do this