MILGRAM'S OBEDIANCE EXPERIMENT Flashcards
define obedience
a form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order. The person issuing the order is usually a figure of authority, who has the power to punish when obedient behaviour is not forthcoming.
what was the aim of Milgram’s experience
Wanted to know if the Germans were ‘different’, and more obedient to authority figures, than people in other countries.
He also wanted to find out if ordinary American citizens would obey an unjust order from an authority figure and inflict pain on another person because they were instructed to.
what was the procedures of Milgram’s experiment
40 American males
volunteers who responded to an advert to take part in an experiment on ‘punishment and learning’.
real participants were always assigned the teacher role- being deceived by the experimenter who said they could also become the learner.
the assigned teacher watched the learner be strapped to the electric chair and was given a a sample electric shock to convince the teacher the procedure was real.
the teacher would read the learner a series of word pairs and then test recall
if the learner made a mistake the teacher was instructed to administer electric shocks and to increase the voltage every time
when increased the learner would scream. AT 300 v the learned said they have a weak heart. at 315 he banged on the wall to leave. at 330 volts he became silent to allude he was dead
what were the findings of Milgram’s study
12% of participants stopped at 300 volts. 65% administered the full 450 volts.
participants showed signs of extreme tension, three participants had uncontrollable seizures.
conclusions of Milgram’s obedience experiment
people obey unjust orders in the right circumstances
Germans are not different to other people. if Hitler had been in another country the Holocaust would have happened again.
Evaluate Milgram’s experiment
internal validity was questioned, only 75% of participants believed the shocks were real. This suggest obedience was high due to participants knowing the shocks were false.
how was the obedience experiment unethical
participants were deceived in various ways, the study was not truly on punishment and learning additionally they did not know the electric shocks were false.
