Milgram's Situational Explanation for Obedience

Question 1

Outline Milgram’s baseline study into obedience

Answer 1

• Aim: To investigate whether people would obey an authority figure even when asked to do something which causes harm to someone else
• Method: Controlled observation in laboratory, independent measures design, 40 male volunteers taking part in a study investigating “how punishment affects learning”
• Procedure: Participants were given an envelope rigged to always give them the role of “teacher,” experimenter (a confederate) wore a white lab coat and would give the teacher instructions, the learner (a confederate) was in the other room and the teacher had to give them an electric shock if they got the answer wrong (saying the correct pair to the word the teacher says) electric shocks were not real but after 300v the learner would bang on the wall and fell silent after 315v, and the experimenter used prods to encourage the teacher to continue going up to 450v (labelled as danger and would be fatal)
• Results: 100% of participants continued up to 300v, 12.5% stopped at 300v and 65% continued up to 450v
• Conclusion: People obey orders from an authority figure even if they are asked to hurt someone and that is a result of the situation they are in

Question 2

Outline Milgram’s location variation

Answer 2

• Procedure: Move laboratory from Yale University to a run-down office block
• Results: Obedience rates dropped from 65% to 47.5%
• Conclusion: Individuals are more likely to obey an authority figure if certain situational variables were in place – a respectable location

Question 3

Outline Milgram’s proximity variation

Answer 3

• Procedure: Varied how close the experimenter was to the participant, and how close the naive participant and the learner were to each other
• Results: When the naïve participant and the ‘learner’ were in the same room obedience rates dropped from 65% to 40%
• Results: When the naïve participant was asked to place the ‘learner’s’ hand onto a shock plate directly, obedience rates dropped to 30%
• Results: When the experimenter left the room and gave the naïve participant orders over the phone, obedience rates dropped to 20.5%
• Conclusion: Individuals are more likely to obey an authority figure if certain situational variables were in place - a close proximity

Question 4

Outline Milgram’s uniform variation

Answer 4

• Procedure: Experimenter in white lab coat was replaced by a person in normal everyday clothes
• Results: Obedience rates dropped from 65% to 20%
• Conclusion: Individuals are more likely to obey an authority figure if certain situational variables were in place - a powerful authoritative uniform

Question 5

What is one strength of the situational explanation for obedience?

Answer 5

1.) High in temporal validity: Findings have been replicated and are still valid today, Blass found no relationship between the study’s year and the amount of obedience in a critical analysis by Milgram and others’ studies, Burger (2009) found levels of obedience identical to Milgram’s 46 years later, this suggests that Milgram’s results are still valid today, therefore increasing the validity of the research which can be used to explain obedience in our modern society

Question 6

What are two limitations of the situational explanation for obedience? (three in total)

Answer 6

1.) Lack of internal validity: Orne and Holland suggest that the participants behaved obedient because they didn’t really believe in the set up and guessed that electric shocks weren’t real, Perry also listened to the tapes of Milgram’s participants and reported that many of them expressed their doubts about the shocks, this means that Milgram was not actually testing obedience so we cannot be sure if his findings and conclusions are valid

2.) Ethical issues: Although the ethical guidelines did not exist at the time he has been criticised for his lack of concern for participants, participants were deceived (deception) of the true aim of the study which made it impossible for them to give their full informed consent; they were also unaware of their right to withdraw due to prods from the experimenter, this means that whilst Milgram argued his participants were “free to leave at any time,” the use of prods made it difficult for them to remove themselves from the research, therefore we must consider if what we have learnt from his findings outweighs the potential costs to his participants

3.) The obedience alibi: Milgram’s research provides people with an “obedience alibi” for unacceptable behaviour, conclusions suggest that obedience only occurs due to situational factors (location, uniform, proximity) HOWEVER (counter-argument) in real world situations people often act cruel to each other without orders: Mandel argues that it is offensive to those who suffered in the Holocaust to give the Nazis an obedience alibi as if they too were victims and were “only following orders.” Therefore explaining behaviour through obedience comes with the risk of an obedience alibi as people will not take responsibility for their actions and the idea of “right” and “wrong” is lost