Milgram Flashcards
Internal Validity (lack)
Orne and Holland criticised Milgram’s research into situational variables affecting obedience and claimed that the participants were ‘going along with the act’ when they ‘shocked’ the learner. They argued that participants did not believe they were really giving electric shocks and that they were not really
distressed, just pretending in order to please the experimenter (demand characteristics). This would question the internal validity of the research because Milgram is measuring how the participants play along with the requests, rather than measuring the effects of situational variables on obedience directly. However,Milgram disputed these claims, providing evidence from debriefing sessions (of participants admitted they had believed they were giving shocks) and through film evidence where participants appeared in considerable distress when delivering the shocks.
Research Support Hofling et al (1996) field experiment
Research Support Hofling et al (1996) field experiment supports Milgram’s research. Hofling et al (1996) suggests that obedience is observable in settings other than laboratories and so studied obedience in the real life setting of a
hospital. Nurses were telephoned by a fictitious doctor to give a higher dose of a potentially dangerous drug to a patient, if they obeyed the order they would be breaking hospital rules. Despite this, 95% of nurses (21 out of 22) followed this
order. Hofling’s research demonstrates the demands of an authority figure are just as powerful regardless of whether the setting is artificial or occurring in a
more natural setting such as a hospital. However, the nurses were less obedient when they could discuss their actions with other nurses or when the drug was well known – only 11% of nurses obeyed in these circumstances, showing that other situational variables influence obedience levels.-reliable
Reliability –
A strength of Milgram’s original research is that it has been repeated numerous times since it was first completed, yielding very high levels of obedience, like the original
study. One example of this was the French television show ‘Le Jeu de la Mort’ (translated: The Game of Death) the participants believed they were contestants in a pilot episode for a new game show – they were asked to give electric shocks to other contestants (who were
actually actors) when ordered by the presenter, in front of a studio audience. 80% of participants delivered the maximum shock of 460volts to an apparently
unconscious man – they showed a lot of the same behaviours as those in Milgram’s study, nail biting and other signs of anxiety. This supports the original findings and conclusions, and shows that it was not a one-off occurrence - meaning the study has good reliability.
