Evaluation Flashcards
Hofling et al
Studied nurses on a hospital ward and found levels of obedience to unjustified demands by doctors was very high with 21/22 nurses obeying which suggests Milgram’s findings can be generalised to other situations
Strength - Milgram’s research
Le Jeu de la Mort (The Game of Death)
A documentary about reality tv in France included a replication of Milgram’s study where contestants believed they were paid to give electric shock to other participants who were in fact actors.
Results= 80% of participants delivered the maximum 460 volts to an apparently unconscious man - behaviour was almost identical to that of Milgram’s research which support his conclusion and that his findings were not an one-off chance occurrence
Strength - Milgram’s research
Orne and Holland internal validity
In Milgrams variations participants worked out the truth especially the part where the experimenter is replaced by a member of the public because it appeared so contrived (made up) so participants saw through the deception
Limitation - Milgram’s research + variations
Proximity
Location
Uniform
Dissenter
Proximity = 20.5% (telephone) Location = 46% Uniform = 20% Dissenter = 10%
Bickman
Three confederates ask people to pick up litter:
1) wearing a jacket and tie
2) milkman’s outfit
3) security guard’s uniform.
People were twice as likely to obey the assistant dressed as the security guard than the one dressed in jacket and tie
Mandel
Mandel argues that Milgram’s research offers an excuse or ‘alibi’ for evil behaviour. It is offensive to holocaust survivors to suggest that the Naxis were simply obeying orders and were victims of the holocaust to suggest that the is were simply obeying orders and were victims themselves of situational variables and that anyone faced with a similar situation would have behaved in the same way runs the risk of trivialising (justifying/normalising) genocide.
Limitation - Variations of Milgram
Blass and Schmitt
showed a flim of milgram’s study to students and asked them to identify who they felt was responsible. Results = the students blamed the ‘experimenter’ who was top of the hierarchy (therefore he had legitimate authority) and due to expert authority (because he was a scientist). They reconsidged legitimate authority as a cayse of obedience supporting this explanation
Strength - Legitimacy of authority
Hoffling et al - legitimacy of authority
Doesnt support Hofling et al’s study: the agentic state predicts that nurses should have showen levels of anxiety similar to milgrams participants as they understood their role in a destructive process but this was not the case so the agentic shift can only account for some situations of obedience
Limitation - Agentic shift
Control of variables in Milgram’s variations:
Control of variables in Milgram’s variations:
Milgram variations systematically altered one variable at a time (such as proximity) to see the effect on the level of obedience. All other procedures and variables were replicated again with more than 1000 participants in total. This demonstrates greater internal validity and that the findings were not just one-off chance events
Milgram and Elms
conducted interviews with participants who were highly obedient in milgram’s study and found they were significantly more authoiran on the F-scale than disobedient participants however this is a correlation and cannot prove the conclusion that the authoritarian personality causes obedience
Christie and Jahoda
F-scale measures the tendency towards an extreme form of rightwing ideology and this is politically bias as left wing authoritarianism e.g. russian bolshevism or chinese maoism also emphasise complete obedience to authority which is a limitation of adorno’s theory because it can not a comprehensive explanation that can account for obedience across the whole political spectrum
Limitation - Authoritarian personality
Asch’s research
found that in one of the variations of his line study, the introduction of an ally caused conformity levels to drop sharply from 33% to 5.5%.
Allen and Levine
found that conformity decreased when there was one dissenter in an Asch-type study (even if the dissenter wore thick glasses and was no position to judge) which shows resistance is not motivated by what someone says but because it enable someone to be free from the pressure of ‘dissenting;
Holland
Repeated Milgram’s study and found 37% of internals did not continue to the highest shock level compared to 23% externals
Strength - internal locus of
Twenge et al
analysed data and found over a 40-year span (1960-2002) people have become more resistant to social influence but also more external. If resistance is linked to locus of control people should become more internal which challenges the link of LOC and resistant behaviour
Limitation - internal locus of
Moscovici et al
First = Two confederates answered green for each of the slides = 8.42% responding with green
Second = Confederates answered green 24 times and blue 12 times = inconsistent responses
1.25% of the participants’ answers were green
Wood et al
Wood et al who carried out a meta-analysis of almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities who were seen as being consistent were the most influential which suggests consistency is a major factor
Gilroy et al
found that patients with arachnophobia who were treated with systematic desensitisation were less fearful than those in a control group who were only taught using relaxation techniques. This shows that systematic desensitisation is a more successful long-term treatment for phobias.
Strength - systematic desensitisation
Symptom substitution - Phobias
Symptom substitution: A common criticism for both treatments of phobias is based on the Freudian theory that if one phobia is treated, another may appear in its place e.g phobia of snakes replaced by a phobia of trains
All symptoms of mental illness are simply a reflection of an underlying unconscious conflict.
Genetic explanation to OCD - Lewis + Taylor
Taylor analysed findings of previous studies and found
that up to 230 different genes may be involved in OCD
Genes in relation to OCD also include those associated with the action of dopamine/ serotonin regulation
Lewis Observed that out of his OCD patients - 37% had parents with OCD and 21% had siblings with OCD which suggests OCD runs in families
