Milgram Flashcards
What was the methodology of Milgrams study?
-Milgram, selected 40 males from people who responded to a newspaper advertisement
-The man believes that they were participating in a study on memory learning (the study was really about levels of obedience)
-The educational levels of the men varied
-Each month was paid £4.50, but they could keep regardless of whether they withdrew
-The study was a controlled observation that took place a lab at university
-what where the procedures of milligrams study?
-Naive, participants were introduced to the participant. Participants drew slips to decide who would play the role of the teacher and the learner (naive Participants always ended up on the teacher side as the drawer was rigged)
-after the draw, the teacher and the learn, it were taken to a room where it appeared that the learner was strapped into an electric chair.
-the learner was told to give approximately free wrong answers to every correct one, and was told to make set responses, to the electric shocks
-The teacher was then taken to another room which had a shock machine which ranged from 15 V all
the way to 450 V
-The teacher was told to administer an electric shock every time the learner gave the wrong answer
-The experimenter would respond to any hesitation from the teacher with 4 standard sentences: please continue, the experiment requires you to continue, it is absolutely essential that you continue, you have no other choice, you must go on
-after the research was completed, the teacher was fully debrief
What were the findings of Milligrams study?
—300v - 40ps
—315v - 35ps
—330v - 31ps
—345v - 29ps
—360v - 28ps
—375v - 27ps
—390-450v - 26ps
What findings where shown through the participants behaviour?
-there were signs of extreme tension displayed by 14 participants:
This consisted of :
-Nervous, laughter and smiling
-Sweating
-Stuttering
-Biting lip
-digging their fingernails into their flesh
-and 3 participants had uncontrollable seizures
-What were the conclusions of Milgram study?
-milgram concluded that the circumstances in which the participants found themselves would combine to create situation, which it proved difficult to disobey
-Milgram concluded that there were 13 elements of the situation that had contributed to these levels of obedience such as payment for experiment
What are the positive evaluation points for Milgrams research?
-strength—>standardised procedure was used, for example, The experimenter followed a script when explaining the task to the participants, and he also used the same standardised verbal prompts to encourage the participant to continue with the experiment, for example “the experiment requires that you continue. Strength as —> allows the study to be replicated—> high external validity. Also allowed variables to be controlled easier eg. Iv and reducing extraneous variables to establish cause and effect—> reliable
Strength—> the study has been replicated. For example burger, conducted a replication of Migrams study and found 70% of ps were willing to exceed 150v. This shows how Milgrams study was reliable as similar results were found years later. HOWEVER, these results can be questioned as burgers study wasn’t an exact replication as he made the study more ethical, as the ethical breaches in Milgram’s study were not allowed to be reproduced. Therefore—> shows external reliability in regards to milgrams findings, however the differences in methodology don’t reflect consistency.
What are negative evaluation points of milgrams research
-negative ethical implication—>caused harm. For example, it was claimed Milgram caused psychological
damage to his participants that could not be justified—> due to ps, indicating high levels of stress in the study eg, stuttering, nail biting and some even having seizures
HOWEVER milgram didn’t predict that ps would go so high on the shock generator and originally estimated, but no more than 3% of ps would go to 450v. Also LSO
Milgram stated that 84% of P’s were happy to have taken
part, and 76% said they had learned something
important. There fore although it breached ethical guidelines, a lot of the participants were happy to have taken place and Milgram couldn’t have predicted the ethical breaches.
