Milgrams research into obedience

Question 1

What is Obedience?

Answer 1

It is a form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order. The person issuing the order is usually a figure of authority, who has the power to punish when obedient behavior is not forthcoming.

Question 2

What is Internal validity?

Answer 2

It is a measure of whether results obtained in a research study are solely affected by changes in the variable being manipulated (i.e. by the independent variable) in a cause-and-effect relationship.

Question 3

What is External validity?

Answer 3

It is a measure of whether data gathered in a research study can be generalised to other situations outside of the research environment they were originally gathered in.

Question 4

How do conformity and obedience differ?

Answer 4

Conformity is a change in behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people. (Asch & Zimbardo’s research)
Obedience is a form of social influence where an individual follows a direct order. The person issuing the order is usually a figure of authority, who has the power to punish when orders are not carried out. (Milgram’s research)

Question 5

What was the aim of Milgram’s study

Answer 5

It was to investigate whether ordinary people would obey an unjust order from an authority figure and inflict pain and injure an innocent person.

Question 6

What was the sample/technique of Milgram’s study

Answer 6

Sample/Technique: Milgram’s sample consisted of 40 male American p’s recruited through a newspaper advert, the ad said he was looking for participants for study about memory. They were all volunteers and were paid $4.50 to take part (this was a reasonable amount of money in the 60’s)

Question 7

What was the Type of experiment of Milgram’s study

Answer 7

Lab experiment

Question 8

What were the variables of Milgram’s study

Answer 8

IV = the degree of authority,
DV = the participants willingness to obey instructions given by authority figure.

Question 9

What were the ethics of Milgram’s study

Answer 9

Participants were told that they could leave the study at any time, this means that they were given the right to withdraw.

Question 10

What was the procedure of Milgram’s study?

Answer 10

Participant, known as teacher, shows learner (fake participant) every time they got something wrong and are told by the experimenter, each time they shock they increase the voltage.

Question 11

What were the results of Milgram’s study

Answer 11

All p’s went to at least 350 volts, 64% continued to full 450 volts!
Qualitative observations made reporting p’s showing signs of distress and tension (sweating, stuttering, trembling).

Question 12

What were the Results of Milgram’s study?

Answer 12

Results: All p’s went to at least 350 volts, 64% continued to full 450 volts!
Qualitative observations made reporting p’s showing signs of distress and tension (sweating, stuttering, trembling).

Question 13

Does Milgram’s study have internal validity?

Answer 13

Originally, Milgram’s study was criticised for lacking internal validity.
Orne and Holland (1968) propose that many of the p’s went to higher voltages because they did not believe the shocks to be real and they were not fooled by the experimenter set up. This means that Milgram may not have been testing what he intended to investigate.
Milgram argued that at least 70% of the p’s did believe that the shocks were real.

Question 14

Does Milgram’s study have external validity? (example)

Answer 14

Aim: Charles K. Hofling (1966) created a more realistic study of obedience than Milgram’s by carrying out field studies on nurses who were unaware that they were involved in an experiment.

Question 15

GRAVE for Milgram’s experiment

Answer 15

G: All male sample, cannot be generalised to females: beta bias and androcentrism, we do not know whether females would have behaved in the same way.
R: Research by Hofling et al (1996).
A: Can be applied to real-life settings such as hospitals, as shown by Hofling suggesting that there are power dynamics in everyday relationships that impact obedience levels.
V: Milgram’s research was a lab experiment so it is argued that it lacked ecological validity for not reflecting obedience in everyday life. But it has external validity as it can be applied to other settings outside of he lab setting, as seen in Hofling’s research.
E: Ethical guidelines were breached: protection from psychological harm and deception.

Question 16

What is one limitation of Milgram’s study? (validity)

Answer 16

P: One limitation of Milgram’s study is that is lacks ecological validity.
E: Milgram conducted a lab experiment which is very different to real life situations of obedience. In real life we often obey more harmless instructions, rather than giving people electric shocks.
C: Therefore, we cannot generalise his findings to real life situations of obedience and cannot conclude that people would obey less severe instructions to the same degree.
Counterargument: However, Milgram counters this claim, stating that the lab can reflect wider authority relationships seen in real life situations. For example, Hoffling et al (1996) found that nurses were surprisingly obedient to unjustified instructions from a doctor in a hospital.

Question 17

What is one limitation of Milgram’s study? (Ethics)

Answer 17

P: Another limitation of Milgram’s study is that is broke several ethical guidelines.
E: Milgram deceived participants as they believed they were taking part in a study of how punishment affects learning, rather than on obedience. Due to the nature of the task, Milgram did not protect his participants from psychological harm, many of them showed signs of real distress during the experiment.
C: Such breaches of ethical guidelines could serve to damage the reputation of psychology and jeopardise future research.
I&D: Whilst participants were all debriefed and interviewed after where they stated they had suffered no long term effects. It could be argued that Milgram’s research is socially sensitive as the results could be used to ensure that people obey orders even the ones they don’t want to.

Question 18

What is a limitation of Milgram’s study? (Population validity)

Answer 18

A final limitation of Milgram’s research concerns his methodology as his study lacks population validity.
E: Milgram used a biased sample of 40 male American volunteers from an individualistic society.
C: Therefore, we are unable to generalise the results to other populations, particularly collectivist cultures or to explain the behaviour of females and whether they would respond in a similar way to what was observed originally by Milgram.
I&D: As only males were used in Milgram’s study, the accusation is that the results cannot be generalised to females, therefore this research is deemed as androcentric. Many people would imagine that females would be much less obedient to orders with destructive consequences.