Obedience and Milgram's research into obedience (1963)

Question 1

Obedience

Answer 1

A type of social influence whereby someone acts in response to a direct order. This order comes from a perceived figure of authority.

Question 2

Who did research into obedience?

Answer 2

Milgram 1963

Question 3

What did Milgram aim to test?

Answer 3

The ‘Germans are different’ hypothesis - the theory that germans are somehow more likely to obey orders to harm others.

Question 4

Who was the sample made up of?

Answer 4

40 American male volunteers

Question 5

Where did the original study take place?

Answer 5

Yale University

Question 6

What did the participants think they were taking part in?

Answer 6

The effects of punishment on learning

Question 7

Was the confederate always the teacher or leaner?

Answer 7

Learner

Question 8

Who was the teacher(participant) instructed by?

Answer 8

An authority figure

Question 9

How was the learner punished?

Answer 9

By flicking switches on a electric shock generator

Question 10

What was the learner assessed on?

Answer 10

Remembering a series of word pairs

Question 11

What was the smallest shock?

Answer 11

15v - labelled slight shock

Question 12

What was the largest shock?

Answer 12

450v - labelled XXX

Question 13

What would happen if the participant refused to continue?

Answer 13

The researcher would respond with direct orders (verbal prods) such as ‘You must continue’

Question 14

What did many of the participants show signs of during the study?

Answer 14

Extreme tension, some shook, sweated and stuttered

Question 15

What was the obedience rate that Milgram found?

Answer 15

65%

Question 16

What does the 65% refer to?

Answer 16

The amount of people that continued to the maximum 450v

Question 17

Why was the high obedience rate so unexpected?

Answer 17

Milgram asked a range of people to predict how people would behave and they predicted that only 1 in 1000 would continue to the maximum level of 450v

Question 18

What did milgram conclude?

Answer 18

Germans are not different and in fact we are all capable of blind and destructive obedience to unjust orders

Question 19

What are the evaluation points for milgrams research?

Answer 19

\+ comes from Hofling et al (1996) field experiment
\+ high degree of control of variables
\+ easy to replicate
- lacks ecological validity
- may encourage demand characteristics
- deception

Question 20

Evidence to support Milgram’s research comes from howling et al (1996)’s field experiment

Answer 20

E: Obedience is observable in real life settings such as hospitals as well as other laboratories
E: Nurses were telephoned by a fictitious doctor to give a higher dose of a potentially dangerous drug to a patient, if they obeyed the order they would have been breaking hospital rules. Despite this, 95% of nurses (21/22) followed this order.
L: supported by other research findings and also suggests that Milgrams has good ecological validity.

Question 21

When were the nurses less obedient?

Answer 21

When they could discuss their actions with other nurses.

Question 22

How many nurses obeyed when it was a well known drug?

Answer 22

11%

Question 23

There was a high degree fo control over variables

Answer 23

E: took place in the controlled setting of a lab making it easier to control extraneous variables.
E: milgram could could control the answers given by the learner, the sounds that the teacher could hear the learner give at specific voltages and the verbal prods used by researcher.
L: higher internal validity

Question 24

Strength of Milgram’s research is that the study was easy to replicate.

Answer 24

E: Controlled setting of a lab made it easier to repeat the research in exactly the same way, adjusting variables each time to test their influence on obedience.
E: Milgram was able to keep everything the same (standardised), but change variables such as proximity and uniform of the authority figure.
L: Test variables affect conformity the most to gain a better understanding

Question 25

Milgrams research can be criticised for lacking ecological validity

Answer 25

E: It took place in the artificial setting of a lab which doesn’t represent real life.
E: People may respond to figures of authority differently in real life situations such as in response to police or manager at work.
L: the finding’s cannot be generalised to real life situations

Question 26

Demand characteristics.

Answer 26

E: Participants may have realised the research set up was fake and were just behaving as they thought they were expected to.
E: Comes from Orne who suggested that participants didn’t believe that the electric shocks were real and they were therefore not really obeying the researcher’s demands to hurt the learner.
L: may lack internal validity

Question 27

Deception

Answer 27

E: Participants were deliberately mislead regarding the true nature of the experiment
E: Milgram led participants to believe that the electric shocks were real when they weren’t. The particpants were denied fully informed consent as thy couldn’t have known about the true nature of the study until afterwards in the debrief.
L: goes against the ethical code of conduct.