milgrams study Flashcards
what is obedience
a type of social influence which causes a person to act in response to an order given by another person
-power of authority
examples of why we obey
-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
what was the aim of the study
to discorver under what conditions people will carry out commands of an authority figure and when will they refuse to obey?
what were the participants in the procedure
-40 american men ages 20-40 years from USA, volunteered to take part
issue with the people who took part (ethical)
they were deceived as they were told it was a memory test
how did they reduce demand characteristics in the procedure
-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
what did the experimenter (confederate) wear
-a lab coat
what was the steps of the milgram study
-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
how did the setup of the learner help reduce demand characteristics
-learner was strapped to a chair in another room and wired with electrodes
what happened every time the person was wrong
-the electric shocks given became increasingly servere and the teacher was not told the shocks were fake and response from learner were fake
what was the minimum and maximum shocks
-15V
-450V
what happened at 300V if teacher got there
-learner pounded on wall and gave no response to the question
what did the experimenter say when teacher turned to them for guidance- standard instruction
-absence of a resoonse should be treated as a wrong answer
example of prods that the experimenter used if teacher felt unsure
prod 1: please continue
prod 4: you have no other choice, you must go on
key findings
-all 40 delivered shocks up to 300V
-12.5% stopped at 300V
-65% continues up to 450V
what data was milgrams observations
-qualitative
what did the participants show signs of
-extreme tension, sweating, trembling, biting lips, groaning, digging fingernails into hands
what happened to three of the participants
they had full blown uncontrollable seizures
what did milgram do prior to the study
-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
what happened after the study
what happened in the followup questionaire
-84% reported to feel glad to participate
-74% felt they had learned something of personal importance
conclusions milgram took from the study
-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
