obedience

Question 1

milgram’s research - procedure

Answer 1

• 40 american men volunteered to take part in study at Yale, supposedly on memory (cover story, increases internal validity)
• when they arrived they were introduced to another participant who was actually a confederate of Milgram’s (Mr Wallace, they got told he had a heart condition) one person was learner and one was teacher but draw was fixed so that participant was always teacher
• teacher got given a real sample shock first (increasing internal validity) to see what it was like, then they were arranged so that the teacher could hear the learner but not see him, experimenter then said a word and learner had to recall it, if made a mistake then got a shock administered by teacher, shocks increased by 15 volts for each mistake
• shocks were actually fake but labelled to seem dangerous, Mr Wallace had responses that sounded real

Question 2

milgram’s research - findings and conclusions

Answer 2

• 100% continued to 300 volts, 12.5% of participants then stopped giving shocks at 300 volts and 65% continued to the highest level of 450 volts ie. they were fully obedient
• qualitative data was also collected including observations such as signs of tension eg. biting lips, groaning, stuttering, trembling, three had ‘full blown uncontrollable seizures’
• milgram concluded that german people are not different due to the fact that the american participants were willing to obey orders even if they might harm another person
• behaviour is not just determined by personality but also by situation (situational explanation)

Question 3

why did milgram do his study?

Answer 3

• he wanted to know why such a high proportion of the german population obeyed hitler’s commands to murder over 6 million jews, he thought they were perhaps more obedient

Question 4

milgram evaluation point - low internal validity

Answer 4

• it is argued that participants only behaved as they did because they didn’t really believe in the setup, so they were play acting
• gina perry listened to tapes and confirmed that only half of the participants believed it was real, so this suggests demand characteristics

Question 5

milligram evaluation point - setting

Answer 5

• took place in yale university in the psychology department which would have inflicted a sense of authority over the participants, credible university, high scientific reputation

Question 6

milgram study - selection of participants

Answer 6

• advert in newspaper asking for male american volunteers to participate in a study about memory and learning, they got paid just for turning up
• this is an example of volunteer sampling
• issue with this is that you can’t really generalise the levels of obedience to other populations because the people who did the study would have wanted to do the study so likely will have been more obedience
• all men so gender bias (androcentric sample), all from america (individualist culture) so cultural bias (ethnocentric sample)

Question 7

milgram study - method and design

Answer 7

• controlled observation in a laboratory so lab experiment
• covert (weren’t aware their actions were being observed) observation of teacher’s responses
• obedience was measured in terms of the voltage shocks given to the victim, classed as obedient if they reached 450 volts

Question 8

milgram evaluation point - reliability

Answer 8

• Mr Wallace’s answers and responses to shocks could be replicated for each participant as they were recorded and not real
• 4 prods were all the same each time
• standardised procedure allowed for multiple variations to be conducted to investigate certain variables