obedience

Question 1

outline research into obedience

Answer 1

milgram 1963

A- To observe whether people would obey a figure of authority when told to harm another person

Evaluating the influence of a destructive authority figure

P- Randomly selected participants – 40 American male volunteers

Yale university in USA

The participants and the condeferate drew lots for their roles

A participant was given the role of teacher and a confederate given the role of learner

Participant had to ask the confederate a series of questions when the confederate got the answer wrong the participant had to give them a shock

The teacher could not see the learner but could hear him

The shocks increased by 15 volts per time to 450v (330v was marked as lethal)

Participants were assessed on how many volts they were willing to shock the confederate with

The experimenter’s role was to give a series of orders/prods when the participant refused to administer the shocks, increasing in terms of demandingness for every time the participant refused to administer a shock

Same 4 prods were used every time participants refused to administer the shocks(first 3 demanded obedience to science ,4 demanded obedience to the confederate)

F- Every participant delivered the shocks up to 300v

65% went up to 450v

No participant stopped below 300v

12.5% stopped at 300v

Vast majority of participants were prepared to give lethal electric shocks to a confederate

C- Concluded that there are certain factors in the situations that encourage obedience

Question 2

strength of research into obedience

Answer 2

P- research support

E-Milgram’s findings were replicated in a french documentary(beauvois et al 2012) .The participants believed they were contestants in a pilot episode for a new. They were paid to give electric shocks ordered by presenter to other participants in front of a studio audience.

E- 80% participants delivered to the maximum shock of 460v to an apparently unconscious man–> behaviour almost identical to milgrams participants—nervous laughter,nail-biting…

L- Support milgrams original findings about obedience to authority and demonstrates that the findings were not just due to special circumstances

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P- Cp to low internal validity

E- Sheridan and king(1972) conducted a study using milgrams procedure.Participants gave real shocks to a puppy in response to orders from an experimenter

E- Despite the stress of the animal,54% of the male student participants and 100% of the female student delivered what they thought was a fatal shock
Suggests that the effects in milgrams study were genuine because people behaved obediently even when the shocks were real

L- Supporting milgrams original finding to understand obedience strengthening internal validity

Question 3

weakness of research into obedience

Answer 3

P- low internal validity

E- May not have been testing what it intended to test 75% of his participants said that they believed the shocks were genuine

E- Orne and holland (1968) argued that participants behaved as they did because they did not believe in the set up–> play acting

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E-Gina perry (2013) listened to tapes of milgrams participants and reported that only about half of them believed the shocks were real ,2/3 of these participants were disobedient

E- Suggest that participants may have been responding to demand characteristics trying to fulfil the aims of the study

L- Findings of the experiment might not serve to aid in our understanding of obedience