Milgram (1963)

Question 1

aims

Answer 1

• interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person.

Question 2

Procedure

Answer 2

• 40 male volunteers aged 20-50
• introduced to other ‘participant’ (confederate) and were ‘randomly’ assigned to teacher and learner roles by picking straws
  -The “learner taken to an adjoining room and strapped to a chair and attached to electrodes so that he could receive shock from an electricity generator. After he has been read a list of word pairs, the “teacher” tests him by naming a word and asking the learner to recall its partner/pair from a list of four possible choices
  -• teacher told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time. voltage from 15 lowest to 450 max. no shocks are actually given
  • The learner gave mainly wrong answers on purpose and for each of these the teacher gave him an electric shock. When the teacher refused to administer a shock the experimenter was to give a series of orders / prods to ensure they continued.

Question 3

findings

Answer 3

• All 40 of the participants in the original study obeyed up to 300 volts
• Overall, 65% of the participants gave shocks up to 450 volts (obeyed) and 35% stopped sometime before 450 volts.

Question 4

conclusions

Answer 4

people are very likely to follow orders from authority figure even if it means killing someone

Question 5

eval point

Answer 5

• The laboratory based experiment has been replicated many times and the high levels of obedience have been shown with other populations, across genders, in different eras and in different situations. In one study by Hofling et al, (1966) 21 out of 22 nurses broke hospital rules by preparing to administer twice the maximum dosage of a drug to a patient after receiving a phone call from an unknown doctor.

Question 6

eval point

Answer 6

• Milgram’s study has been criticised for being highly unethical. As well as being deceived about the nature of the study and being pressured to continue when they wanted to quit, participants experienced a great deal of stress as a result of going through the procedure, which some believe is not acceptable