Obedience- Milgram

Question 1

Baseline Procedure

Answer 1

• 1963
• 40 american men volunteered to take part in a study at Yale supposedly on memory
• When each volunteer arrived he was introduced to a confederate and they drew lots to see who would be the teacher and who would be the learner
• the draw was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher
• the teacher could not see the learner but could hear him
• the teacher had to give the learner an electric shock every time the learner made a mistake on the memory task
• the shocks increased with each mistake in 15 volt steps up until 450V- shocks were fake but labelled to suggest they were increasingly dangerous

Question 2

Baseline Findings

Answer 2

• Every participant delievered shocks up to 300 volts
• 12.5% stopped at 300V and 65% continued to 450V
• MIlgram also collected qualitative data including observations- participants showed signs of extreme tension, ‘sweat, tremble, stutter, bite their lips’
• three had ‘full blown uncontrollable seizures

Question 3

Other data

Answer 3

• Before the study, Milgram asked 14 psychology students to predict the particpants’ behaviour
• the students estimated that no more than £5 of the participants would continue to 450V
• all participants in the baseline study were fully debriefed and assured that their behaviour was entirely normal

Question 4

Conclusions

Answer 4

• Milgram concluded that German people were not different
• The American participants in his experiment were willing to obey orders even when they might harm another person
• He suspected that there were certain factors in the situation that encouraged obedience

Question 5

Research support

Strength

Answer 5

• Milgrams findings were replicated ina french documentary
• participants in a ‘gameshow’ believed they were contestants in a pilot show
• paid to give fake electric shocks to other actors in front of a studio audience
• 80% of participants delivered the maximum number of shocks to an apparently unconscious man
• their behaviour was identical to Milgram’s participants- nail biting, nervous laughter, other signs of anxiety
• supports Milgrams original findings

Question 6

Low Internal Validity

Limitation

Answer 6

• Milgram’s procedure may not have been testing what it was intending to test
• 75% of Milgram’s participants said they believed the shocks were genuine
• Gina Perry (2013) listened to tapes of Milgrams participants and reported that only about half of them said the shocks were realand 2/3 of these participants were disobedient
• suggests that participants may have been responding to demand characteristics

Question 7

Alternative interpretation of findings

Limitation

Answer 7

• Haslam (2014) showed that Milgrams participants obeyed when the Experimenter delivered the first 3 verbal prods
• However, every participant who was given the fourth verbal prod (You have no other choice, you must go on) without exception disobeyed
• According to social identity theory, participants only obeyed when they identified with the scientific aims of the experiment (the experiment requires you to continue)
• when ordered to blindly obey an authority figure they disobeyed
• SIT may provide a more valid interpretation of Milgram’s finding