Tuesday 7th November ‘23

Thursday 9th November ‘23

A form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order.

What impacts this?

• Who is giving the order - level of authority (or perceived authority) and legitimacy of authority

• Dispositional factors - personality of person being given the order

• Situational factors (environment) - proximity of person giving order, location, uniform

Milgram (1963) - AO1

• Aim: would ordinary American citizens obey an unjust order from an authority figure anf inflict pain on another person because they were instructed to?

• Volunteer sampling: 40 American men aged 20-50 years old, recruited via a newspaper advert for a memory advert, paid $4.50 to take part.

• Procedure: (not so) “random” assigning of role of teacher and learner, teacher read out pairs of words for learner (in another room) to recall, each time an error was made, electric shock administerd, shocks increase in 15V increments up to 450V.

• Findings: all participants delivered shocks up to 300V (when learner was pounding on the wall), 65% went all the way up to 450V (learner had stopped responding in any way after 315V).

• Suggestions: under the right circumstances, ordinary people will obey unjust orders - he suspected certain situational factors may also influence levels of obedience so conducted some follow up research.

• Variations

  • Proximity

    • Change in procedure: (a) teacher and learner in same room; (b) touch proximity - teacher had to force learner’s hand onto electrostatic plate if they refused; (c) remote instruction - experimenter left the room and gave instructions to teacher by telephone.

    • Findings: (a) obedience drops from 65% to 40%; (b) dropped to 30%; (c) dropped to 20.5% - participants frequently pretended to give shocks.

    • Suggestions: decreased proximity allows people to psychologically distance themselves with the consequences of their actions.

  • Location

    • Change in procedure: Milgram conducted a variation in a run-down office block (rather than in the prestigious Yale University).

    • Findings: obedience fell to 47.5%.

    • Suggestions: prestigious environment gave study LOA - perceived that experiment shared this; obedience still high in office block due to perceived ‘scientific’ nature of procedure.

  • Uniform

    • Change in procedure: grey lab coat experimenter (inconvenient phone call causes them to leave)→ ordinary member of the public confederate in everyday clothes.

    • Findings: dropped to 20.5%

    • Suggestions: uniforms encourage obedience as they are symbol of authority - this is legitimate.

Milgram (1963) - AO3

• Lab experiment

  • Control of extraneous variables - causual relationships can be concluded; easy to replicate

  • Low mundane realism; demand characterics; investigator effect

• Ethical issues

  • Deception; no right to withdraw; lack of protection from harm.

  • Participants sent a questionnaire and most agreed that they are happy to have taken part in the experiment.

2Supporting Studies

• Beauvois et al (2012) - replicated Milgram’s experiment in the form of a game show in front of a live audience and found almost identical levels of obedience.

• Hofling et al (1966) - arranged for an unknown doctor to call 22 nurses and tell them to administer an overdose of a drug and 21 followed the order without question.

• Sheridan and King (1972) - participants gave shocks to puppies under orders from the experimenter and 54% of men and 100% women administered what they thought was a fatal shock.