Milgram Flashcards
Milgram: What was the aim?
How far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person
Milgram: What was the background
‘Germans are different’ hypothesis
Milgram: What was the design?
Controlled observation, in a lab, self report
Milgram: IV and DV
No IV
DV: The voltage given to the Learner
Milgram: Sample
Self-selected - Newspaper Ad
Yale University - Connecticut - USA
40 Males - Ages 20-50
Range of occupation and backgrounds
Paid $4
Milgram: Apparatus
Room One: Shock Generator - 15-450 Volts - example shock of 45V to the ppts.
Room Two: Electric Chair
Milgram: Describe the three roles
Experimenter - 31 year old biology teacher - grey technicians coat
Learner - Actor
Teacher - All ppts assigned teacher
Milgram: What were the participants told about the shocks?
‘Although shocks can be extremely painful, but would cause no permanent damage’
Milgram: What happened at 300 Volts
Learner would pound against the wall and stay silent - not respond
Milgram: What were the prods?
Please continue
The experiment requires you to continue
It is absolutely essential that you continue
You have no other choice but to continue
Milgram: Results
Quantitative:
100% of Participants shocked up to 300 Volts
65% (26/40) went up to 450 Volts
Qualitative:
‘He’s banging in there, I’m gonna chicken out. I’d like to continue but I can’t do that to a man…I’m sorry I can’t do that to a man. I’ll hurt his heart. You take your money.’
Milgram: Conclusions
People are surprisingly obedient to authority
Demonstrated the power of the situation in obedience rather than dispositional factors - Germans are not different
A significant number of participants were disobedient (14)
Milgram: Validity
Low Ecological Validity: Takes place in lab
Low Population Validity: Only Males between 20-50, in the US but from a range of backgrounds
Face Validity: The participants were Deceived - told it was a study on memory - low face validity
Construct Validity: tests nature vs nurture and the ‘Germans are different’ - proved his hypothesis wrong (Germans not different - situation effects behaviour)
Concurrent Validity: Low as this was the first experiment of this sort to have been done
Milgram: Reliability
Inter-Rater Reliability: experimenter dressed and acted the same, same prods, the voltages were the same and order of the method was the same - every participant experienced the same test
Inter-Observer Reliability: Low - one observer and it was the same observer in each experiment - no one to compare answers
Test-Retest Reliability: he only tested each participant once
Split-Half Reliability: Not in Milgram - could not
do it twice because they find out about the deception but could look at the Qual data before and after 300V
Milgram: Methodology
+ Controlled - gets rid of extraneous variables
- Some demand characteristics - self selected sample - new they were in an experiment - wasn’t told the full experiment though
Milgram: Ethnocentrism
Only Americans - Individualist Culture
Milgram: Sampling Bias
+ Range of occupations and background
+ Met target population therefore could somewhat be generalized to obedience
- Only Males - limits generalizability
Milgram: Ethics
Deception: Participants were under the impression the study was about memory, Participants thought the electric shocks were genuine, Participants thought they had an equal chance of becoming either the teacher or the learner
Deception meant informed consent was not given
Psychological Harm: Participants visibly distressed, trembling, sweating, stuttering, nervous laughter, digging fingernails into palm of hands, 3 participants had uncontrolled seizures and many asked to stop (Qualitative data)
They were debriefed but some participants took 12months to actually have been debriefed.
However, Confidentiality of Participants were given
Milgram: Why did people obey?
Location - Yale
Paid $4.50
Told the shocks weren’t dangerous
