milgrams original study

Question 1

aims

Answer 1

• to investigate whether ordinary people would follow orders and give an innocent person a potentially harmful electric shock.

Question 2

milgrams sample

Answer 2

• he placed an advertisement in the local newspaper.
• there were 40 males , age 20-50, a range of jobs and educational levels.

Question 3

procedure

Answer 3

Milgram watched everything through a one-way mirror. The role of the “Experimenter” was taken by a stern biology teacher in a lab coat called “Mr Williams”.

Milgram employed a confederate (or “stooge”) to help. “Mr Wallace”, a man in his 40s, pretended to be another participant. After a faked coin-toss, Mr Wallace became the “Learner” and the naïve participant became the “Teacher”. The Teacher watched Mr Wallace being strapped into an electric chair. The Teacher felt a 45V shock to “prove” that the electric chair was real. Participants were assured that, although the shocks were painful, they would “not cause lasting damage”.

In the room next door was the shock generator, a machine with switches running from 15V to 450V and labels like “Slight Shock” or “Danger”.

Mr Wallace learned a list of word-pairs. The Teacher’s job was to read words into the microphone followed by four options for the second word in the pair. Mr Wallace would indicate his answer by pressing a button. If the answer was wrong, the Experiment ordered the Teacher to press the switch delivering a 15V shock. The shock went up by 15V with each wrong answer.

The Learner’s answers were pre-set and his cries of pain tape-recorded. The Learner got three-quarters of his answers wrong. At 300V the Learner banged on the wall and stopped answering. The Experimenter ordered the Learner to treat ‘no answer’ as a wrong answer, to deliver the shock and proceed with the next question.

The Experimenter had a set of pre-scripted “prods” that were to be said if the Teacher questioned any of the orders. If all four prods had to be used, the observation would stop. It also stopped if the Learner got up and left or reached 450V.
Please continue.
The experiment requires you to continue.
It is absolutely essential that you continue.
You have no other choice but to continue.

• it was important standardised prods were used because it increases reliability. participants weren’t being influenced by anything but the prods.
• at the end of the experiment, they were introduced to mr Wallace, and said he was a confederate. they also told them it was a test of obedience not learning.

Question 4

results

Answer 4

The participants were obedient up until 300V; this is the point where the Learner kicked the wall and stopped answering questions. Between 300V and 375V, 14 participants dropped out of the study (by exhausting all 4 “prods” with their questions and arguments). The remaining 26 (65%) carried on to 450V shock at the end.

Milgram also collected qualitative data. He observed the participants sweating, trembling, stuttering and groaning. 14 showed nervous laughter

Question 5

conclusion

Answer 5

• ordinary Americans are surprisingly obedient to legitimate authority figure. a number of factors may explain this such as perceived competence and reputation of researcher. milgram went on to develop agency theory to explain the behaviour he observed.

Question 6

generalisability

Answer 6

Volunteers are likely to be particularly obedient (after all, they want to be doing the experiment). On the other hand, volunteers tend to listen to instructions and take the procedure seriously, which is representative of people in real life situations of power being misused.

A sample of 40 is quite large, but anomalies (unusually cruel, gullible or timid people) might spoil the results. The original sample was all-male, which cannot generalise to women, and all-American, which may not generalise to other cultures. It may also be “time-locked” in the early 1960s with its rather deferential culture.

When you put all of Milgram’s variations together, he tested 780 people, which should remove anomalies. However, some of the Variations (like #13) only tested 20 participants, so a few rebellious individuals (like the ones who overpowered the confederate) might spoil things.

Question 7

reliability

Answer 7

• a strength is that it was standardised meaning that every participant had the exact same experience.
• the two confederates were always played by the same actors, the n umber and timing of the learners mistakes was the same for everyone. the experimenters responses were also supposedly tightly scripted. for example the prods were always given in the same tone and order.
• this is important because it means the study is replicable, and has been tested successfully.

CA however Perry 2012 argues that there were occasions when the experimenter deviated from the script.
- for example, he allegedly gave as many as 20 prods before allowing to leave
- therefore this means it may not be as standardised.

Question 8

application

Answer 8

• have been applied to improve pilot training.
• tarnow 2000 describes how first officers often fail to monitor and challenge errors made by captain due to authority. officers are hesitant to question the captain even when their behaviour is putting others at risk.
• this led to training to improve cockpit behaviour and save lives.

Question 9

validity

Answer 9

• a weakness is that participants may only have obeyed because they did not believe that the shocks were real.
• Orne and holland argued that participants behaved the way they did because they didn’t really believe in the set up; participants guessed it wasn’t real shocks but went along with it anyway.
• this calls into question the internal validity as milligram was not testing what he intended to test.

CA-
milgram counter argued these claims as he observed the anxiety and stress levels of participants in his film footage as trembling.
- participants would not have shown such extreme reactions if they didn’t really believe they were giving shocks.
- therefore we can say that the study did have high internal validity.