Milgram’s Variations Flashcards
What is the telephonic instructions experiment (experiment 7)?
Reason: the experimenter sat in the same room as ppts in the original
Change: the ‘experimenter’ gave the orders over the telephone
What are the results of experiment 7?
22.5% were fully obedient
• ppts lied on the phone
• ppts found it easier to resist authority
What is the conclusion drawn from experiment 7?
The physical presence of the authority figure appears to be an important situational factor that increases obedience and reduces dissent
What is the evaluation for experiment 7?
Evidence for Hogling
What is the rundown office block (experiment 10)?
Reason: many of milgram’s ppts said that the prestigious university setting led them to trust the integrity and competence of the ‘experimenter’
Change: Milgram moved the study to a rundown building, in Bridgeport (an industrial city near Yale university)
What are the results for experiment 10?
48% of participants were fully obedient
Participants voiced the doubts about the legitimacy
What is the conclusion drawn from experiment 10?
The prestigious context is an important situational factor that affects levels of obedience. The shall be setting reduce the legitimacy of the researcher. However, the link to scientific research seemed to be enough to still encourage relatively high levels of obedience.
What is the evaluation of experiment 10?
A strength of this variation was the fact that Milgram collected not only quantitive data but also qualitative data in the form of audio record recordings of the dialogue between the participants and the researcher
Researchers who conducted analysis on these recordings found that the earlier in the procedure that the participants challenged the experimenter, the more likely they were to be fully defiant
This qualitative data allows researchers to gain a deeper understanding into the different types of resistance
What is the ordinary man gives orders experiment (experiment 13)?
Reason: Milgrim wanted to disentangled the question of whether people will obey an order due to the strength of the command itself or due to the status of the person given the order
Change: participants arrived with two confederates rather than one. One Confederate is assigned the role of the learner and the other Confederate is assigned to the role of recording times from a Clock. The real participant is the teacher. The experimenter explains the task as usual, and the teacher observed Mr Wallace being strapped into the chair. The experiment gets a fake phone call , the participant teacher gets put in charge. The Confederate recorder enthusiastically suggests administering shocks but increase by 15 V every time the learner makes a mistake and insists that they follow this procedure.
What are the results of experiment 13?
20% were obedient
80% refused to continue
What is the evaluation of experiment 13?
Weakness - could lack internal validity
Milgrim himself explains that the withdrawal of the experimenter from the laboratory was awkward. Although the aim of this variation was to see what happens when the orders come from someone who has no legitimate authority, this was almost impossible to achieve.
Milgrim says there were many traces of so-called derived authority as it was the experimenter who had initially described the study and the idea of administering shocks
This suggests that obedience may be even lower in situations where the person giving orders is completely unrelated to any authority figure or institutional context
