Milgram Flashcards
Aims:
‘Germans are different’ hypothesis.
Bad things in Nazi Germany occurred because Germans are more obedient.
The aim was to investigate level of obedience when participants were shown by an authority figure to administer electric shocks to another person.
What was the research method ??
Often described as an experiment, although there is no condition (all the P’s took part in the same condition).
Milgram was testing the affect of experimenter ‘prods’ on the P’s level of obedience.
‘Controlled obeservation’
What data was collected ??
Quantitative data - volts.
Qualitative data - observed P’s emotional responses and interviewed the P’s after the study.
Sample:
40 males , 20-50 years.
Volunteered - newspaper advertisement ‘study of memory and learning’.
Yale university, psychology lab.
Paid for participation.
Features of the shock generator:
30 switches, increase of 15 volts.
15-450 volts.
‘Slight shock’, ‘moderate shock’, ‘strong shock’, ‘very strong shock’, ‘intense shock’, ‘extreme intensity shock’, ‘danger - severe shock’.
Who played the experimenter and ‘learner’ / confederate ??
31 year old biology teacher.
Appeared emotionless throughout the experiment.
Mr Wallace, 47 year old.
What was the cover story??
“Want to find out what effect punishment will have on learning”.
How did the experimenter decide who will be the ‘learner’ and the ‘teacher’??
The P was asked to draw a name from a hag. The draw was rigged so the P was always the ‘teacher’ and Mr Wallace was always the ‘learner’.
Procedure lay out:
Teacher and learner taken into adjacent rooms, the teacher saw the learner be strapped to the electric chair.
The P heard the experimenter state ‘although shocks can be extremely painful, they cause no permanent tissue damage’.
What did the P had to ‘teach’ the learner??
P was asked to read a series of word pairs for the learner to learn.
The teacher then test the learner by giving him one of the words in the pair along with another four.
The learner had to indicate which of the four words was the one originally paired with the first word.
Their answer was communicated by pressing one of four switches which illuminated a light on the top of the shock generator.
