Obedience

Question 1

define obedience

Answer 1

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 behaviour is not forthcoming

Question 2

what did Stanley Milgram do? (1963)

Answer 2

he designed a baseline procedure that could be used to assess obedience levels

Question 3

In later variation, what did Milgram do?

Answer 3

the procedure was adapted and the baseline findings were used to make comparisons

Question 4

who took part in the baseline procedure?

Answer 4

40 American men volunteered to take part in a study supposedly on memory 90

Question 5

what happened when each volunteer arrived at Milgram’s lab?

Answer 5

volunteer was introduced to another participant (a confederate of Milgram)

they drew lots to see who would be the teacher and who would be the learner

the drew was fixed so the participant was the teacher

an experimenter (another confederate) was involved too

Question 6

what did the study aim to do?

Answer 6

the study aimed to assess obedience in a situation where an authority figure (experimenter) ordered the participant (teacher) to give an increasingly strong shock to a learner located in a different room (increasing in 15 volts each time up to 450 volts)

the shocks were fake but the teacher didn’t know this

Question 7

what voltage did the participants shock up to?

Answer 7

every participant delivered shocks up to 300 volts (‘intense shock’)

12.5% (5 people) stopped at 300 volts and 65% continued to the highest level of 450 volts

they were fully obedient

Question 8

what else did Milgram collect?

Answer 8

qualitative data including observations such as :

participants showing signs of extreme tension - sweating, tremble, stutter, digging finger nails into their hands

3 even had ‘full blown seizures’

Question 9

what did Milgram do before the study?

Answer 9

asked 14 psychology students to predict the participants’ behaviour

Question 10

what did they predict?

Answer 10

that no more than 3% would continue to 450 volts

this shows that the findings were unexpected - the students underestimated how obedient people actually are

Question 11

what did all the participants have after the baseline study?

Answer 11

they were debriefed and assured that their behaviour was entirely normal .

they were also sent a follow up questionnaire - 84% said they were glad to have participated

Question 12

what did Milgram conclude?

Answer 12

Germans are not ‘different’

the American participants were willing to obey his orders even though they might harm another person

he suspected that there were certain factors in the situation which encouraged obedience

he conducted further studies

Question 13

why did Milgram create this study?

Answer 13

he questioned why a high proportion of the German population obeyed Hitler’s commands to murder 6 million Jews in the Holocaust

as well as 5 million Romani , homosexuals , black Germans , poles and members of other groups

Question 14

what is a strength of Milgram’s study?

Answer 14

they were replicated in a f
French documentary made about reality tv

Question 15

what did the French documentary show?

Answer 15

the participants in the game believed they were contestants in a pilot episode for a new show called the game of death

they were paid to give (fake ) electric shocks to the other participants (who were actually actors) in front of a studio audience

Question 16

what were the findings of this show?

Answer 16

80% of the participants delivered the maximum shock of 460 volts to an apparently unconscious man

their behaviour was almost identical to that of Milgram’s participants - nervous laughter , nail biting, other signals of anxiety

this supports Milgram’s original findings about obedience to authority and demonstrates that the findings about obedience to authority

and demonstrates that the findings were not just due to special circumstances

Question 17

what is a limitation to Milgram’s procedure?

Answer 17

it may not have been testing what he intended to test

Milgram reported that 75% of his participants said they believed the shocks were genuine

Question 18

what did Martin Ome and Charles Holland (1968) argue?

Answer 18

that the participants behaved as they did because they didn’t really believe in the set up , so they were ‘play acting’

Question 19

what did Gina Perry’s (2013) research confirm?

Answer 19

it confirms their idea - she listened to tapes of Milgram’s participants and reported thta only about half of them believed the shocks were real

2/3 of these participants were disobedient
this suggests that the participants may have been responding to demand characteristics - trying to fulfil the aims of the study

Question 20

Counterpoint: what did Charles Sheridan and Richard King (1972) do?

Answer 20

conducted a study using a procedure like Milgram’s

participants (all students) gave real shocks to a puppy - in response to the orders from an experimenter

despite the real distress of the animal , 54% of the men and 100% of the woman gave what they thought was the fatal shock

this suggest that the effects of Milgram’s study were genuine because people behaved obediently even when the shocks were real

Question 21

what is another limitation to Milgram’s conclusions ?

Answer 21

Milgram’s conclusions about blind obedience may not be justified

Question 22

what did Alex Haslam (2014) show?

Answer 22

that Milgram’s participants obeyed when the experimenter delivered the first three verbal prods

but every participant who was given the fourth prod - ‘you have no other choice you must go on’ - without exception - disobeyed

Question 23

according to the social identity theory , what is said?

Answer 23

that participants in Milgram’s study only obeyed when they identified with the scientific aims of the research (‘the experimenter requires that you continue’)

when they were ordered to blindly obey an authority figure, they refused - this shows that the SIT may provide a more valid interpretation of Milgram’s findings - especially as Milgram himself suggested that ‘identifying with the science’ is a reason for obedience