Milgrams research Flashcards
Outline Milgram’s research into obedience.
Procedure: ‘Teacher’ gave fake electric shocks to ‘learner’ during a ‘learning task’, ordered to do so by an experimenter. At 315v learner pounded on the wall for the last time. Prods, e.g. ‘You have no other choice, you must go on’.
Findings: No participants stopped before 300v and 65% went all the way to the top of the shock scale, 450v. Many showed signs of stress, most objected but continued anyway. Prior survey said 3% would obey.
Evaluate Milgram’s research in terms of validity.
Low Validity - Orne & Holland. Participants could guess the study. Demand characteristics.
High External validity - Hofling et al. Nurses administering drugs after being told by doctors. Milgram’s findings apply to other situations.
What is the social identity theory and why does it suggest that people obey?
All about group identification. In Milgram’s study the teachers identified with the science and so obeyed the researcher. Obedience dropped because ppts started to identify with the victim.
Why is the social identity theory a limitation to Milgram’s conclusions about obedience?
Milgram claimed ppts obeyed because of the presence of the authority figure. SIT suggests obedience occurred due to identification with the researcher or victim.
Outline the ethical issues with Milgram’s instructions. What knock-on effects could these have had for participants?
Deception: Didn’t know that teacher / learner was rigged; didn’t know the shocks were fake. It prevents participants from giving their fully informed consent to take part. If participants are deceived about the procedure they can still consent to take part, but that consent is worthless because participants do not know what it is they are consenting to. It may even mean that participants are leaving themselves vulnerable to psychological harm, because they do not know what the procedure involves and what their role in it is.
Briefly outline what is meant by situational variables.
Factors that affect someone’s level of obedience. Factors are all due to external circumstances.
Outline the 3 situational variables Milgram tested and the effect it had on obedience.
Baseline obedience at 65%. Proximity - the closeness of a participant to the experimenter affected obedience. When the experimenter was in a different room obedience fell to 40%.
Location - where the experiment is held. When in a run down office building obedience fell to 47.5%.
Uniform - what the experimenter was wearing. When the experimenter was wearing civilian clothing conformity fell to 20%. Uniform caused the largest drop in the level of conformity or any other concluding sentence.
Outline one strength of Milgram’s variations.
Research support. Experiments conducted in other areas saw similar results proving that situational variables apply universally.
Example: outside of a laboratory experiment a confederate wearing civilian clothing told strangers there was a fire and he needed help. The participants were more likely to conform when the investigator was wearing a police or other authoritative uniform than when wearing civilian clothing.
Shows that these variables apply outside a lab setting.
Outline one limitation of Milgram’s variations
Lack of internal validity. Participants may have worked out that it was ‘staged’ and acted how they thought the investigator wanted them to act. Demand characteristics. Would mean that the results were not showing authentic behaviour, but behaviour that was put on.
Briefly explain what happened when Milgram’s variations were applied across different cultures.
Similar results were found in different cultures. It was found that Spanish students had obedience 90% (similar to Milgram’s results). This suggests Milgram’s findings aren’t limited to the male American students and range across different cultures.
Smith and Bond said that these variations were only applied across western developed societies so it cannot be said these results apply universally, they just aren’t limited to the USA.
Why is a high level of control a strength of Milgram’s variations?
He focused on one variation at a time. He isolated each variable in order to study that explicitly. Therefore he got true results for each variation so there was a high level of control. Made the study reliable and replicable.
Milgram’s finding support the influence of situational explanations of behaviour. This has, however, been criticised by Mandel, who claims that this simply offers an excuse for evil deeds. Taking the Holocaust into account, why could this been seen as offensive? Why do individual differences need to be considered?
It could be argued that Nazi soldiers can’t be held responsible for their actions in the Holocaust because they were just following orders. The situational variables they were exposed to: Proximity - orders given face to face. Uniforms - the soldiers uniform. Location - Battle fields/War camps. Suggests the soldiers are also victims. Individual differences would have an affect on behaviour - this explanations suggests that all people would act in the same way, if they were in the same situation.
