Milgram - Obedience experiment Flashcards
Who were the participants in Milgram’s study?
40 male volunteers who were randomly selected
What was the procedure of Milgram’s study?
Participant given role of ‘teacher’ and confederate given the role of ‘learner’. Decided through a random allocation. Participant had to ask the confederate a series of questions. Whenever the confederate got the answer wrong, the participant had to give him an electric shock, even when no answer was given. The electric shocks incremented by 15 volts at a time, ranging from 300V to 450V, where 330V was marked as ‘lethal’.
Participants thought the shocks were real when in fact there were no real shocks administered, and the confederate was acting. The shocks were falsely demonstrated to be real prior to the start of the study.
What were participants assessed on in Milgram’s study?
How many volts they were willing to shock the confederate with
What was the role of the experimenter?
To give a series of orders/prods when the participant refused to administer a shock, which increased in terms of demandingness for every time the participant refused to administer a shock.
What were the findings of Milgram’s study?
All participants went to 300V and 65% went to 450V.
Only 12.5% stopped at 300V
How did proximity affect obedience?
Participants obeyed more when the experimenter was in the same room (62.5%). This was reduced to 40% when the experimenter and participant were in separate rooms, and reduced to a further 30% in the touch proximity condition.
How did location affect obedience?
Participants obeyed more when the study was conducted at a prestigious university because the prestige of such location demands obedience and may also increase the trust that the participant places in the integrity of the researchers and their experiments
How did uniform affect obedience?
Participants obeyed more when the experimenter wore a lab coat, giving the experimenter a greater sense of legitimacy.
Evaluate the study (debriefing)
The participants were thoroughly and carefully debriefed on the real aims of the study. In a follow up study conducted a year later, 84% of participants were glad they were part of the study, suggesting that the study left little or no permanent long term psychological harm on participants.
Evaluate the study (real life applications)
This research opened our eyes to the problem of obedience and so may reduce future obedience in response to destructive authority figures. A general awareness of the power of such individuals is useful in establishing social order and moral behaviours.
Evaluate the study (lack of ecological validity)
The tasks given to participants are not like those we would encounter in real life, meaning that the methodology lacks mundane realism, producing results which are low in ecological validity
