Milgram (1963) Obedience to Authority

Question 1

Method

Answer 1

• Laboratory experiments to test factors thought to affect obedience,
• Tested whether people would obey orders to shock someone in a separate room,
• Took place at Yale university,
• 40 men participated, responding to newspaper adverts seeking volunteers for a study on ‘learning and memory’,
• Participants were received payment for attending,
• Experimenter wore a grey technicians coat,
• Each participant was introduced to a confederate, the two drew lots to see who would act as teacher and learner, this was fixed so that the participant was always teacher,
• The participant witnessed the confederate be stapped to a chair and connected up to a shock generator in the next room, it didn’t actually deliver shocks, but the participant thought it real,
• Switches ranged from 15 volts to 450 volts,
• The participant taught the learner word-pairs over the intercom, when the learner answered incorrectly, the participant had to administer an electric shock of increasing level,
• After the 300 v shock, the learner pounded on the wall and made no further responses, if participants hesitated during the process, the experimenter told them to continue,
• Debriefing included an interview, questionnaires and being reunited with the learner.

Question 2

Results

Answer 2

• 26 participants, 65%, administered 450 v and none stopped before administering 300 v,
• Most participants showed signs of stress like sweating, groaning and trembling.

Question 3

Conclusion

Answer 3

• Ordinary people will obey orders to hurt someone else, even if it means acting against their conscience.

Question 4

Evaluation

Answer 4

• Internal validity; possible participants didn’t really believe they were inflicting electric shocks; just going along with the experimenter’s expectations (demand characteristics); Milgram claims participants’ stressed reactions showed they believed the experiment real,
• Ecological validity; Milgram’s participants did a task that they were unlikely to encounter in real life; study lacks ecological validity. Was a lab experiment; good control of variables; possible to establish cause and effect,
• Ethical issues; participants deceived; unable to give informed consent; weren’t informed of right to withdraw; were prompted to continue when wanting to stop. Participant showed stress during the experiment; weren’t protected; were extensively debriefed and 84% of them said they were pleased to have taken part. Time of experiment = no formal ethical guidelines in place; Milgram didn’t breach any.

Question 5

What situational factors did Milgram identify as causing obedience? What were the variations that showed this and what were the results?

Answer 5

• Presence of ally, two confederates and one naive participant variation; participant less likely to obey when the two confederates disobeyed,
• Proximity of victim, when learner was in the same room, full shock dropped to 40%. When participants physically had to force the learner’s hand onto the shock plate, dropped to 30%,
• Proximity of authority, when the authority figure gave prompts by phone from another room, obedience rates dropped to 23%,
• Location of the experiment, When participants were told the study was being run by a private company, and the experiment was moved to a set of run-down offices in a nearby town, the proportion of people giving the maximum shocks fell to 48%.