milgrams study

Question 1

what is obedience

Answer 1

a type of social influence which causes a person to act in response to an order given by another person
-power of authority

Question 2

examples of why we obey

Answer 2

-human nature
-through past experiences
-personality and upbringing
-assume people have knowledge and expertise (informational social influence)
-take consequences away from us if we have been told to do something we dont want to do

Question 3

what was the aim of the study

Answer 3

to discorver under what conditions people will carry out commands of an authority figure and when will they refuse to obey?

Question 4

what were the participants in the procedure

Answer 4

-40 american men ages 20-40 years from USA, volunteered to take part

Question 5

issue with the people who took part (ethical)

Answer 5

they were deceived as they were told it was a memory test

Question 6

how did they reduce demand characteristics in the procedure

Answer 6

-when ppts arrived at the lab they were introduced to another participant (confederate)
-they drew lots for their role, and confederate was always the learner and true participant was always the teacher

Question 7

what did the experimenter (confederate) wear

Answer 7

-a lab coat

Question 8

what was the steps of the milgram study

Answer 8

-teacher was given a list of paired associates (words learner had to repeat) and was told to shock the learner when gave an incorrect response

Question 9

how did the setup of the learner help reduce demand characteristics

Answer 9

-learner was strapped to a chair in another room and wired with electrodes

Question 10

what happened every time the person was wrong

Answer 10

-the electric shocks given became increasingly servere and the teacher was not told the shocks were fake and response from learner were fake

Question 11

what was the minimum and maximum shocks

Answer 11

-15V
-450V

Question 12

what happened at 300V if teacher got there

Answer 12

-learner pounded on wall and gave no response to the question

Question 13

what did the experimenter say when teacher turned to them for guidance- standard instruction

Answer 13

-absence of a resoonse should be treated as a wrong answer

Question 14

example of prods that the experimenter used if teacher felt unsure

Answer 14

prod 1: please continue
prod 4: you have no other choice, you must go on

Question 15

key findings

Answer 15

-all 40 delivered shocks up to 300V
-12.5% stopped at 300V
-65% continues up to 450V

Question 16

what data was milgrams observations

Answer 16

-qualitative

Question 17

what did the participants show signs of

Answer 17

-extreme tension, sweating, trembling, biting lips, groaning, digging fingernails into hands

Question 18

what happened to three of the participants

Answer 18

they had full blown uncontrollable seizures

Question 19

what did milgram do prior to the study

Answer 19

-prior to the study milgram asked 14 psycholgoy students to predict the naive participants behaviour
-they estimated that no more than 3% would continue to 450V

Question 20

what happened after the study

Question 21

what happened in the followup questionaire

Answer 21

-84% reported to feel glad to participate
-74% felt they had learned something of personal importance

Question 22

conclusions milgram took from the study

Answer 22

-german people not different from anyone else
-there were certain factors in the situation (situational variables) that encouraged obedience, so conducted further studies to investigate these