Milgram (1963) Flashcards
The reason Milgram carried out the experiment was
to test the ‘Germans are different’ hypothesis and to attempt to explain the horrors carried out by Nazis
The aim of the experiment was
to investigate what level of obedience would be shown when participants were told by an authority figure to administer electric shocks to another person
How many participants were there?
40 Males aged 20-50 from the New Haven area
Participants believed the study was to
see if punishment impacted learning
Milgram created a fake shock generator which had voltages from 15V to 450V and he gave participants a sample shock of
45V
Participants were told that the shocks could be
painful but couldn’t cause any permanent tissue damage
The participant was asked to read a series of word pairs to the learner and administer electric shock of
increasing voltage for every incorrect answer
The learner would be respond in ways such as
moaning
requests to be excused
agonised screams
kicking the wall and begging to be released
Participant were given verbal prods such as
- ‘Please continue’
- ‘The experiment requires that you continue’
- ‘It is absolutely essential that you continue’
- ‘You have no other choice, you must go on’
All 40 participants obeyed up to
300V at which point 5 refused to continue
65% of participants gave shocks up to
450V
What signs of stress did some of the participants give during the experiment?
They sweated, trembled, dug their fingernails into their flesh and visibly shook, 3 had seizures