Milgram

Question 1

Aim of study

Answer 1

• to investigate the extent to which people obey the orders of an authority figure

Question 2

Standard procedure

Answer 2

• 40 American males aged 20-50
• told they were taking part in a study of the effects of punishment on memory and learning
• the “experimenter” (wearing a lab coat) told pt he had randomly been assigned the role of teacher and the other “pt” had been randomly assigned learner
• real pt was given a 45V shock himself to prove everything was real
• the pt teacher next door, taught learner a list of word pairs -> for each wrong answer an electric shock was sent out: increased in power for each wrong answer 15V - 450V
• at 150V learner began to protest, 315V screamed in pain after 330V went silent
• if the pt asked to stop the experiment, the experimenter would reply with 1 of 4:
• please continue, the experiment requires you to continue, you must continue and you have no other choice

Question 3

Milgram results

Answer 3

• 26/40 pts (65%) went to 450V
• 100% went to 300V
• most pts displayed physical symptoms of discomfort at what they were doing such as sweating, twitching
• 3 suffered from seizures due to intense levels of stress

Question 4

Limitation of Milgram

Answer 4

gender + cultural bias

Question 5

situational factors effecting obedience

Answer 5

• proximity
• location
• uniform

Question 6

proximity

Answer 6

• discovered that if obedience declined if the pt was closer to the learner
• same room obedience fell from 40% to 60%
• one version the pt had to place learners hand onto a shock plate (30%)
• with instructions over the phone fell to 21% from original 65%

Question 7

location

Answer 7

• original experiment was at yale
• replicated in an office in a bad part of town, dropped to 47.5%

Question 8

uniform

Answer 8

• half way through experimenter was replaced with someone wearing normal clothes
• went from 65% to 20%

Question 9

bickman uniform support

Answer 9

• 38% of pts obeyed the orders of someone wearing normal clothes (19%) and milkman outfit (14%)

Question 10

strength of milgrams variations

Answer 10

• replicated in other cultures
• meeus + quintint procedure on dutch participants
• ordered to say stressful things in an interview
• 90% obeyed
• high ecoloigcal validity