milgrim's study - obedience Flashcards
define obedience.
a form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order usually from a figure with perceived authority.
state the situational variables that milgrim changed in his study.
proximity
uniform
location
what is a situational variable?
external circumstances that can influence a person (e.g uniform)
what is a dispositional variable?
an internal trait that influences a person (e.g personality type)
what type of participants were used in his study?
40 male volunteers - randomly selected.
describe the procedure of milgrims experiment.
- participants were given role of teacher and confederates the role of student.
- participants were asked to administer electric shocks to ‘students’ if they answered the questions asked wrong.
- intensity of shocks increased to 450.
- participants thought shocks were real when actually no shocks were given (they were falsely demonstrated) - experimenter had to prompt them to continue with experiment whenever they P’s were hesitant, but they were allowed to withdraw at any point.
what was the aim of this study?
to investigate to what extent people are obedient to someone who is perceived of having authority.
describe the findings of his experiment.
all participants went up to 300v and 65% went up to 450v, showing vast majority were prepared to give lethal electric shocks to a confederate.
describe how proximity affected rates of obedience.
- participants obeyed less when experimenter was not in the same room as them (dropped to 21%)
- participants obeyed less when confederate was in the same room as them (dropped to 40%)
describe how uniform affected rates of obedience.
- participants obeyed more when experimenter wore a lab coat.
- when he was replaced with another confederate in regular clothes, obedience rated dropped to 20%
describe how location affected rates of obedience.
- participants obeyed more when study was conducted at a prestigious university (e.g when study was replicated in a run down office, obedience rates dropped to 48%)
- if its a high status location, there is increased legitimacy.
what are the strengths of this study?
findings have historical validity - they apply as much today as they did in 1960s.
Durkin and Jefferey research support for power of uniform - demonstrated that children’s understanding of police authority was dominated by visual cues (real life applications)
highly replicable.
what are the weaknesses of this study?
ethical issues - deception, so informed consent was not obtained.
lack of internal validity - lacks realism, P’s were sceptical about whether shocks were real which may affect obedience (Perry)
lack of ecological validity - lacks mundane realism, situation is not encountered in real life.
Mandel - concludes using obedience as an explanation for these atrocities, masks the real reasons behind such behaviours.
what are the ethical issues of this experiment?
- emotional distress
- difficult for them to withdraw
- lack of informed consent, deception
- however, cost benefit perspective - its worth the temporary suffering for our understanding of obedience.
what are the issues with the method in this study?
sample bias - all male, not representative of population, so findings cannot be generalised.
environment - Yale was not a normal location, so lacks ecological validity.
lack of mundane realism - unrealistic scenario.
Orne and Holland - demand characteristics, some p’s clocked shocks weren’t real.
evaluate the validity of this study.
standardised procedures - e.g pre recording of confederate, clear scripts, so each participant gets same experience.
highly scientific method - can see the impact of specific variable (extraneous) and allows replication.
Blass - carried out same experiment across 8 different countries and gathered same results of obedience (historical validity)
