02. Milgram 1963 Flashcards
What is obedience?
A type of social influence where someone acts in response to a direct order usually given by someone considered to have more authority than themselves.
Why are we more likely to obey a legitimate authority figure?
Because of the agentic state- the individual gives up their morals to an authority figure. In this state, the individual perceives themselves as an agent of the authority figure and is willing to carry out their commands, even if it goes against their own moral code.
What makes them a legitimate authority figure is the individuals position of power in the social hierarchy.
Why is obedience seen to be important in society?
Society is hierarchical in nature.
-Survival function
-Social order and harmony
-Without obedience there would be challenges to social order
-Societal breakdown
What was the aim of the study?
To investigate the procedure of obedience.
How far will an individual go in obeying an authority figure?
Will an individual hurt another person against their will?
Who participated in the study? (Sample)
40 males aged 20-50, from New Haven USA. They varied from unskilled works to professionals and educational backgrounds.
They were volunteered in response to an advertisement in a local newspaper and were offered $4.50 to take part in the study.
What are some strengths of Milgram’s sample? (AO3)
Strength: Sample was varied as participants ranged from skilled workers to unskilled workers and were from an age range of 20-50 and all educational backgrounds. So sample was representative of a range of people.
What are some weaknesses of Milgram’s sample? (AO3)
Weakness: Only included males (androcentric), who were able to read and excluded students and those over 50. Therefore they may have had individual differences to those unlikely to volunteer, so findings have poor generalisability.
What is the study background?
Milgram wanted to find an explanation as to why so many were killed in World War 2. He wanted to find out why average German people obeyed orders to kill millions of innocent people.
Describe the procedure of Milgram’s study (Validity)
Took place at Yale university. The participant was deceived and told they were taking part in a study on learning and memory.
They drew lots to decide who was given the role of the learner or the teacher, but it was rigged so the participant was always given the role of the teacher. They were asked to administer an electric shock to the learner in 15V increments up to 450V. The participant was given a test shock of 40V to make them think that the shock generator was real.
What is a strength of the procedure? (Validity)
Controlled for demand characteristics: participants were deceived and not told the true aim of the study. They were led to believe they’d been randomly assigned the role of a teacher and that they were delivering real electric shocks.
This meant that ppts were behaving in a natural way as they were unaware it was their own obedience that was being observed. The use of deception to reduce demand characteristics increases the internal validity of the finding that most ppts will obey a destructive order from an authority figure.
What is a weakness of the procedure? (Validity)
Lacks ecological validity: The setting was a lab at Yale University, an artificial setting and participants would have been aware they were taking part in a study, which may make them behave in an unnatural way. Hence it’s unlikely that participants would behave the same in a natural environment with an authority figure. Therefore results may be inaccurate in a real life setting.
What were the results from the study? (Application)
65% of participants were obedient up to 450V and 100% were obedient up to 300V. Hence most will obey destructive orders from a legitimate authority figure.
Strength of baseline study? (Application)
Has useful application as can explain why people blindly obey in situations where there is a legitimate authority figure. Eg Tarnow (2000) used Milgram’s findings to improve pilot training to encourage first officers to challenge the authority of the pilot when they are in error. Tarnow believes this could prevent up to 20% of plane crashes.
Weakness of baseline study? (Application)
It’s worth remembering that 35% of ppts did not continue to shock the ‘learner’ up to 450V, which shows that not all people will follow destructive orders and some will dissent. This means that we cannot apply the findings to predict that everyone will show blind obedience to authority. This is a weakness of the application of Milgram’s results and conclusions, as he had no explanation for why some individuals were able to dissent. This lowers the application of Milgram’s findings, and therefore may not benefit society.
Describe the procedure (Standardisation)
Participants were individually brought into the lab by the experimenter, who followed a script explaining they had to help a learner with memory tasks and administer an electric shock each time the learner made a mistake. The participant could hear the learner ‘crying out in pain’ when they gave them a shock. At 300V the leaner was heard to say ‘That’s enough get me out of here’. If the participant objected to giving the shocks, the experimenter encouraged them to continue using ‘prods’. Eg ‘please continue’, ‘please go on’, the ‘experiment requires you to continue’, ‘you have no choice you must go on’.
