milgrams

Question 1

what is milligrams study

Answer 1

a behavioural study of obedience in the social area

Question 2

background

Answer 2

wanted to see if germans are unique and to test whether germans are different or if anyone is capable of being as obedient as the nazis if they are put in the same similar situation

Question 3

aim

Answer 3

to investigate obedience by testing how far ordinary Americans would go into obeying an authority figure

Question 4

design

Answer 4

it is a highly controlled observation as they are not manipulating an independent variable. it Is a lab experiment

Question 5

sample

Answer 5

• participants ages 20-50
• 40 males
• all from new haven
• variety of different backgrounds: teachers, salesmen, engineers

Question 6

how were participants recruited for this study

Answer 6

• advert was placed in the local new haven newspaper
• $4.50 offered for taking part
• wasn’t told that it was a study for obedience and was informed that it was a a memory and learning task
• self selecting sampling method.

Question 7

procedure

Answer 7

1. participants were greeted by an experimenter in a grey lab coat and introduced to a middle aged salesmen called mr wallace.
2. participants and mr Wallace would pick a role in the experiment which was manipulated as mr Wallace would always be the learner and the participant will always be the teacher
3. mr Wallace was strapped to a chair and had electrodes attached to his arm
4. participants were given a trial shock of 45v and thought that the goal of the experiments was about memory and learning
5. participants are given a fake paired work task where participants (teachers) would have to administrate shocks if learner would answer the question wrong.
6. if the learner answers the question wrong, the participants were told to give him an electric shock and must increase the voltage by 15v each time.
7. if the participant indicated his unwillingness to proceed the experimenter would respond with a series of standardised prods

Question 8

what was the voltage range

Answer 8

15v to 450v

Question 9

what was the trial shock

Answer 9

45v

Question 10

when did the learner show first signs of distress

Answer 10

at 300v

Question 11

what happened at 300v

Answer 11

learner showed signs of distress, banging on walls and after stopped answering questions

Question 12

how many prods did the experimenter give

Answer 12

4

Question 13

what were the 4 prods

Answer 13

• “please continue, please go on”
• “the experiment requires that you continue.”
• “it is absolutely essential that you continue”
• “you have no other choice, you must continue”

Question 14

what were the quantitative findings found

Answer 14

• 26 obeying the orders of the experimenter to continue giving shocks up to 450v
• 65% participants proceeded upto 450v
• all 40 went up to 300v
• 5 refused to continue after 300v
• 9 more stopped after 375v
• 3 uncontrollable seizures

Question 15

what were the qualitative findings found

Answer 15

• “I don’t think this is very humane” , “it’ll hurt his heart, you take your money”
• participants show signs of distress, and extreme tension such as trembling, sweating, stuttering, biting lips
• comments showing aggitation and anger;
  “ I think he’s trying to communicate, he’s knocking its not fair to shock the guy.”

Question 16

conclusions

Answer 16

• it was the situation that produces strong tendencies to obey as most people are capable of harming others if told to by a perceived authority figure
• only those who went all the way to 450v were considered ‘obedient’
• the situation that participants were in caused extraordinary tension and emotional strain as it produced a conflict between who to please

Question 17

why were there high levels of obedience

Answer 17

• done at a prestigious university (Yale) which has a high reputation so there is a form of trust.
• told it was an experiment so they felt high levels of responsibility.
• learner volunteered to take part and felt obliged to continue as both volunteered.
• paid
• lack of clarity about what would be overstepping the limit.

Question 18

why were there high levels of tension

Answer 18

• the sense of conflict between who to please
• paid
• battling moral conscious between whether to continue the experiment or stop for the sake of the learner

Question 19

apparatus

Answer 19

• shock generator
• electrodes
• lab coat
• audio player

Question 20

validity of the experiment

Answer 20

• high levels of FACE VALIDTY: which means that it was measuring what we wanted to measure; however some argue that the explanation in terms of obedience is too simplistic and that the behaviour of participants could reflect their empathy and levels of moral courage as only 65% actually proceeded to reach the maximum level of volts.
• lacks ECOLOGICAL VALIDTY:
  as it is not an everyday occurrence to be instructed to give someone a series of electric shocks because the have given an incorrect answer ti questions.
  it also wasn’t similar to those faced by people working in death camps in nazi Germany as people were generally killed in large numbers all at one through the use of gas rather than individually using electricity, and milligrams participants would not have feared that any negative consequences would happen to them or their loved ones if they were disobedient.
  however there was some similarities by issuing explicit instructions to do something that would cause suffering to another innocent person, the issue of payment to those carrying these acts. the way in which these people were harmed were invisible those the people harming them.

Question 21

reliability of the experiment

Answer 21

• high levels of INTERNAL RELIABILITY: as the whole procedure was highly reputable and standardised with 40 different participants. w
• high levels of EXTERNAL RELIABILITY:
  as milligrams sample was large enough to suggest a consistent effect and iron out any anomalies. it was large enough to do this without being unmanageable in terms of the cost and effort involved to collect data from them.

Question 22

was this study ethnocentric

Answer 22

-milligrams study was seen as ethnocentric because it was only carried out in one country (The USA) and it cannot be assumed that the levels of obedience seen among his American participants would reflect the levels of obedience seen among people in other countries.
-however it can be argued that his study showed that obedience to authority is something that could be expected to be seen in different counties around the world as it was now seen in two countries: Germany and now in the USA
- replications of milligrams study were carried out by other researchers in other countries in subsequent years and found similar high levels of obedience in most countries, this suggests that milgrams research findings ultimately were not true to Americans alone.

Question 23

what research method did milligram use

Answer 23

experiment:
- it had a dependent variable (participants were counted as either obedient or disobedient, with them being seperated into these 2 groups in accordance with whether they administered electric shocks all the way up to 450 volts maximum).
- controls: the same shock generator machine was used each time; the same people played the roles of the experimenter and the learner; the feedback that the teacher got from the learner during the course of the study was the same each time

Question 24

ethical guidelines that were supported

Answer 24

• CONSENT: participants consented to take part.
• RIGHT TO WITHDRAW: they could clearly withdraw from the study as 35% of them did; however the experimenter were discouraging them.
  -CONFIDENTIALITY: no names of individual participants were reported in the original research
• DEBRIEF: every participant were given a debrief before they left the labratory. they were also sent a 5 page report ‘specifically designed to enhance the value of his experience’ that those subjects felt to have suffered the most from participation were examined one year later by an impartial psychiatrist, and that nearly 84% of participants stated that they were glad to have taken part in the experiment.

Question 25

how is milgrams study linked to the individual and situational explanation debate

Answer 25

• the descriptions of how participants behaved whilst administering electric shocks to the learner makes it clear that they were extremely uncomfortable with what they were doing.
• the facts that 65% of participants were still prepared to administer electric shocks all the way up to the maximum of 450V shows that the power of the SITUATION to influence behaviour.
• however the fact that 35% of participants were somehow able to resist the pressure of the situation and walk away before administering the maximum of 450V provides evidence that peoples personalities can be an even greater influence on their behaviour than the situational pressures around them.

Question 26

how did milgram try to find out which features of the situation had a big impact on their behaviour of the participants

Answer 26

• milgram carried our a series of variations on his original procedure, altering one aspect of the procedure at a time, such as conducting it at an office building in Bridgeport rather than at Yale university and 47.5% of participants went up to 450V, having the victim in the same room as the teacher and 40% went up to 450v.
• having 2 experimenters give the contradictory commands about whether the teacher should stop giving electric shocks or continue (0% went up to 450V).
• these helped isolate which features of the situation were having the greatest impact on leading to the obedient behaviour

Question 27

how does milgram study link to the free will/determinism debate?

Answer 27

• 65% of patricians who administered electric shocks to the learner all the way up to 450V can be seen having their behaviour DETERMINED by the situation in which they were.
• however, 35% of participants who walked away from the experiments before reaching the maximum of 450V can be seen as exercising FREE WILL and choosing how they act.

Question 28

how does milgram study link to the usefulness of the researcher

Answer 28

• can be seen as extremely useful, it suggests to people in positions of authority that people in positions subordinate to them can be generally expected to be obedient.
• the variations on milgrams original experiment suggests that levels of obedience might be enhanced by keeping anyone who might be harmed by the persons obedient actions invisible to the, and also by not having anyone else there giving contradictory orders.
• while milgrmss study could be put to positive use by responsible authority figured, it also has the potential to be abused by those who might seek to get people to obey them for malicious purposes.
• further use of the study is for all of us to guard against blind obedience and to make our own minds up about whether the orders we are being given are ones we feel comfortable obeying