Milgram & Bocchiaro

Question 1

Milgram Aim

Answer 1

To investigate tendency of obedience when told orders by an authority figure resulting in pain and harm of another person. To see how large an electric shock would be inflicted.

Question 2

Milgram Sample

Answer 2

40 men aged 20 to 50 by newspaper advertisement.

Question 3

Milgram procedure

Answer 3

• participants were promised $4.50 for participation
• conducted at Yale University
• participant = teacher, confederate = learner
• learner was strapped into chair with electrodes, participant read out word pairs and for every wrong answer, ppt had to shock them.
• shocks started at 15V to 450V, increasing by 15 for every wrong answer
• they were asked to rate 0-14 how harmful it was to shock others.
• they were debriefed.

Question 4

Milgram Results

Answer 4

65% gave the full 450V
100% gave 300V+
Qualitative data was gathered in comments & protests to stop (groaning, sweating, seizure…)

Question 5

Milgram Conclusion

Answer 5

• people are much more obedient to destructive orders than we might expect, even when obeying destructive disorders.
• people find receiving & obeying destructive orders highly stressful

Question 6

Milgram positives

Answer 6

Lab experiment which means highly controlled and low chance of extraneous variables and easy to replicate.
Quantitative and qualitative data was collected.

Question 7

Milgram negatives

Answer 7

Unethical= deception, not informed consent and harm during study.
Invalid= lack of realism (artificial environment)
Sampling bias= all men from the same region in USA.

Question 8

Bocchiaro Aim

Answer 8

To investigate rates of obedience, disobedience and whistle-blowing in a situation where no physical violence was involved but there was an ethically wrong instruction. Also looked at accuracy of estimates and the role of dispositional factors.

Question 9

Bocchiaro Participants

Answer 9

92 took part in the 8 pilot studies.
149 in the main experiment by flyers in a uni cafeteria.
Further 138 were surveyed on how they believed they’d respond in this situation.

Question 10

Bocchiaro Procedure

Answer 10

• Lab experiment.
• each participant was given €7
• upon arrival, they were told they were taking part in sensory deprivation research.
• participants were instructed to write a statement to convince participation in sensory deprivation procedure using at least 2 words from “exciting, incredible, great” and not mentioning any negatives.
• they were offered regular paid work in the future.
• participant was left alone and had the choice to obey (compose statement), disobey (not compose statement) or whistleblow (signing an ethics form and mailing it)
• pps were debriefed

Question 11

Bocchiaro Results

Answer 11

Predicted:
Obey= 4%
Whistleblow= 65%

Actual:
Obey= 77%
Whistleblow= 9%

Question 12

Bocchiaro Conclusions

Answer 12

People are very obedient and whistleblowing is uncommon.
People overestimate tendency to whistleblow and underestimate obedience.
There is little / no evidence to suggest that dispositional factors affect obedience / whistleblowing.

Question 13

Bocchiaro positives

Answer 13

• quantitative data enabled easy comparison between predictions and actual scores.
• large sample size.
• lab experiment so easily replicated & controlled.

Question 14

Bocchiaro negatives

Answer 14

Unethical: people were deceived however they were told quickly after.
-volunteer sampling means that it is unlikely to give a representative sample and all were from the same uni

Question 15

Similarities

Answer 15

• both uses a volunteer sample using an advert.
• both were lab experiments and ppts were aware they were taking part.
• both studies used rates of obedience as the main aim.

Question 16

Differences

Answer 16

• milgram used all male sample and bocchiaro used mix-sex.

- milgrams ppts were ordered directly to inflict pain, whereas bocchiaros were just to write a message.