milgram

Question 1

aim

Answer 1

see whether people would obey and inflict harm on another person using electric shocks, by following the orders of an authority figure
see whether all individuals had potentiometer to cause harm like Germans/Nazis did

Question 2

procedure

Answer 2

recruited 40 male participants through newspaper articles
ad said he was looking for participants for a study about memory
aged 20-50 years
jobs ranged from unskilled to proffesdional
offered 4.50
true participant=teacher
learner had to sit in chair wired with electrodes
if got answer wrong, increasingly gave more severe electric shocks

Question 3

findings

Answer 3

no participants stopped below 300 volts
five participants stopped at 300 volts
65% continued to the highest levels of 450 volts
three had full blown seizures
Milgram asked 4 psychology students their estimations
they estimated that no more then 3 participants would continue to 450 volts
shows they were incorrect

Question 4

conclusion

Answer 4

84% of participants frlt glad that they took part in the study as they learnt something about themselves
milgram concluded that Geerman people are not different
American participants in his study obeyed orders even when they might harm another person

Question 5

strength-supporting replication

Answer 5

results obtains in Milgram’s study of obedience has been replicated in real life settings
e.g Hofling
conducted study in hopital
nurses were telephoned by Dr smith who asked rhat they administrated a drug to a patient

Question 6

weakness-lacks population validity

Answer 6

another methodological criticism of Milgram’s study is that it lacks population validity
this is because Milgram used a biased sample of 40 male American volunteers from a broadly individualist culture
therefore, unable to generalise the results to other populations

Question 7

weakness-low in internal validity

Answer 7

Orne and holland propose that so many of the participants went to the higher voltages because they did not believe the shocks to be real and they were in fact fooled by the experimental set up

Question 8

weakness-ethical issues

Answer 8

Milgram’s study raises several ethical issues. Baumrind was a very critical of the ways Milgram deceived his participants. Milgram deceived his participants as they believed that they were taking part in a study of memory and learning rather then obedience. He also led participants to believe that the allocation of teacher and learner was random however it was fixed.