Lesson 5: Obedience To Authority

Question 1

Obedience

Answer 1

• Obedience is behaving as instructed to by an authority figure. Authority figures have status and/or power over others.

Question 2

Milgram (1963) - procedure

Answer 2

• Milgram placed advert in a newspaper asking participants to take part in a study about the effect of punishment on learning. 40 pps invited to the Psychology department at Yale university and were met by experimenter who was a man in a white laboratory coat, who was a confederate. They were introduced to a man named Mr Wallace who was another participant. The confederate (Wallace) pretended to have a weak heart. Mr Wallace and the participant were asked to pick notes out of a hat to determine whether they would play the role of teacher or learner in the experiment. This was set up so that the real participant would always get teacher and Mr Wallace would get learner. The participant was told his role as a teacher was to punish the learner if they made a mistake on a memory test by administering an electric shock, increasing the voltage each time they made a mistake.
• The learner was taken to a room and hooked up to the electric shock machine. The teacher was placed in an adjoining room with the machine. The shock machine and controls were fake but convincing. To administer each shocks, the teacher pressed switches on the machine controls. Each switch was labelled with a voltage rating, starting at 15 voltes and rising in increments of 15 volts to 450 volts. Each group of four switches were also labelled with text like ‘slight shock’ to ‘severe shock’. As the shocks became more severe, Mr Wallace demanded to be released, screamed, kicked the wall and complained about his weak heart, refused to answer questions then finally went silent.
• The experimenter ensured that the teacher continued with the experiment. When the teacher showed reluctance to shock the learner, the experimenter prompted him to continue, using one of four statements ‘please continue’, ‘the experiment requires you continue’ and ‘it is absolutely essential that you continue’ and ‘you have no choice, you must continue’.

Question 3

Milgram (1963) - findings

Answer 3

• 100% of participants gave shocks up to 300 volts (when Mr Wallace banged on the wall and stopped answering) and 65% of participants gave electric shocks all the way up to maximum 450 volts. Participants felt a high level of stress during the experiments, they showed symptoms including sweating, trembling and , in some cases, anxious and hysterical laughter. Despite this, most were obedient and willing to inflict potentially lethal shocks on a man with a weak heart.

Question 4

Milgram weakness (deception)

Answer 4

• Participants were deceived about the true nature of the experiment as they were told it was about mentors when it was really about obedience (this also means they did not give their informed consent to take part). Participants were also led to believe that the electric shocks they were delivering were real and that Mr Wallace was another participant who had a weak heart. However, this deception was necessary to avoid demand characteristics and therefore increase the validity of the study.

Question 5

Milgram weakness (psychological harm)

Answer 5

• During the experiment participants became extremely distressed and may have even thought they had killed Mr Wallace so they were not protected from psychological harm. However, Milgram did not expect his participants to obey and so this psychological harm could not have been anticipated.

Question 6

Milgram weakness (right to withdraw)

Answer 6

• Several participants asked to leave the experiment but were told that they were not allowed, violating their right to withdraw from the experiment.

Question 7

Milgram strength (cost-benefit analysis)

Answer 7

+ Despite issues with Milgram’s study many psychologists feel that after conducting a cost-benefit analysis the study was worthwhile. We now know that most people could potentially do the same thing, leading to people taking more responsibility and not blindly following orders, the participants did not suffer any true long-term emotional disturbances and most of them said they were happy to have taken part and that they had learnt something important from the experience.

Question 8

Milgram weakness (sample)

Answer 8

• The sample is unrepresentative as all of the participants were white American males. Therefore the results cannot be generalised to women (gender bias) or other cultures (cultural bias). However, this study has since been replicated with women and the obedience rates was not significantly different.