Burger Flashcards
What was the aim of the study?
- To find out if the same results as Milgram’s 1963 study re-occur when the study is replicated with modern ppts in 2009
- To see if personality variables like empathy and locus control influence obedience.
- To see if presence of a disobedient model makes a different to obedience levels
What is the Independent variable?
- Base condition compared with the ‘model refusal’ condition
What is the dependent variable?
- obedience is measured by how many volts the last shock to be delivered was - before ppts refused to go on
What was the sample like?
- 70 participants (men and women)
- randomly put into two conditions
- volunteer sample - recruited through newspaper and online ads
- paid 50 dollars
- aged 20-81
What was the design of the experiment?
- independent group design - compared 1960 ppts with 2009
Why were some of the ppts dropped?
- Dropped a lot of volunteers if:
- they heard of Milgram’s original experiment
- attended more than 2 psychology classes
- has anxiety issues
- drug dependency
- used a 2 step screening process
What is the procedure?
- Replictates Milgram’s variation #5
- experimenter - white men in 30s
- confederate - in his 50s
- script resembles Milgram’s
- ppts received shock of 15v rather than 45v
- ppts/teachers watches confederates (learner strapped in electric chair, sits at the shock generator in a adjacent room
- teacher reads out 25 multiple choice questions, learner uses buzzer to indicate the answer.
- wrong answer - directs an electric shock
- starting at 15v, going up in 15v intervals
- learner indicates he has a ‘slight heart condition’, experimenter replies shocks are not as harmful
- 75v - learner makes sound of pain
- 150v - learner cries he wants to stop, complains of chest pains
What was the modal refusal condition like?
- second confederate pretends to be a second teacher
- Teacher delivers the shocks, naive ppts watching
- At 90v - the confederates turn to the naive ppts
- He refuses to go and the experimenter tells the naive ppts to take over.
What were the Results?
- Burger found that 70% of ppts in the baseline condition were prepared to go past 150v, compared to 82.5% in Milgram variation #5
- Compared men and women - found no difference of obedience
- empathy did not make a significant different to obedience.
What were the conclusions?
- people are still influence by situational factors to obey authority figures, even if it goes against their moral values
- Burger argued any of the ppts who was willing to go beyond 150v would have been willing to go all the way to 150v like Milgram’s ppts did.
- The modal refusal results were not very different from the base condition
- Empathy did not make a difference to obedience.
What did Burger call the 150 volt level?
- The point of no return
What did the learner do at the 150 volt level?
- Said his heart was bothering him
How were the participants recruited?
- through newspapers and flyers
How many people were selected to be in the final sample?
- 70
What other variation did Burger test for?
- other teaching rebelling/disobeying
In experiment 5, what percentage of participants went past 150 volts?
- 82.5%
what percentage of participants went beyond 150 volts?
- 70%
which two personality traits were measured/
- empathy and desire for control