Obedience - Milgram Flashcards
Stanley Milgram
Developed a basline procedue to asses obedience levels - adapted later to more variations which affected obedience
Obedience
A form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order - person issuing order is usually a figure of authority who has the power to punish when obedient behavior is not forthcoming
Electrocution - Baseline procedure
- 40 American men volunteered to take part in study - supposedly on memory
- Each pp were introduced to another pp (confederate) and drew ‘randomly’ (not really) to see who was Teacher and learner (the pp is always the teacher).
- Also an experimenter involved (confederate - dressed in lab coat)
- (teacher + experimenter) in separate room to learner. The teacher will ask the learner questions, if they can’t ans then the teacher will** shock (fake)** them. The shock increases after every question that can’t ans (15 volts tp 450 volts).
- Experimenter acts as authority figure, if pp doesn’t want to continue the E will **pressure **them to continue (“the study must go on”)
Electrocution - findings
Every pp delivered shocks to 300 Volts
* 12.5% (5 pps) stopped at 300 V
* 65% continued to the highest lvl of 450 V
Milgram - collected also qualitative date, observations: pps signs of extreme tension, sweat, tremble, stutter, 3 had ‘full-blown uncontrollable seizures’.
Findings - other data
M asked 14 psych students to predict pps behavior. Estimated no more than 3% of pps would continue to 450 V.
* Shows findings were unexpected - underestimated how obedient they were
* All pps in baseline study were debriefed + assured their behavior was entirely normal - sent follow-up questionnaire 84% said to be glad they participated
Conclusions
He suspected that there were certain factors in the situation that encouraged obedience - conducted further studies to investigate
Strength
EVAL: Research support
- Milgram’s experiment were replicated in a French documentary about reality TV - focused on a game show made especially for the programme.
- Pps believed they were in a game - paid to give (fake) electric shocks (ordered by the presenter) to other pps (actors) in front of studio audience.
- 80% of pps delivered 460 V to “unconscious man” - behavior is shown identical to Milgrams pps - showing signs of anxiety
- supports milgrams findings to obedience to authority and not due to special circumstances
Weakness
EVAL: Low internal validity
- Milgram’s procedure may not have been testing what he intended to test - said about 75% of his pps believed shocks were real
- Martin Orne + Charles Holland (1968) believed they were only ‘play acting’ as they didn’t believe in the setup
- Gina Perry (2013) research backs this up - listened to tapes of M’s pps and said only half believed them to be true
- two thirds of pps were disobedient - suggests pps may have been responding to demand characteristics - fufilling the aims of the study
Weakness
EVAL: Alternative interpretation of findings
- M’s conclusions about blind obedience may not be justified
- Alex Haslam et al (2014) - M’s pps obeyed with the first 3 prods given by experimenter but not the 4th (‘you have no other choice you must go on’) - disobeyed without exception
- Social identity theory - M’s patients only obeyed when they identified with the scientific aims of the research
- Shows that SIT may provide a more valid interpretation of M’s findings - M himself suggested ‘identifying with the science is a reason for obedience
Strength
EVAL: External validity
- External validity has been established by supporting studies –
Hofling et al (1966) observed the behaviour of doctors and nurses in a natural experiment (covert observation). The researchers - Found that 95% of nurses in a hospital obeyed a doctor
(confederate) over the phone to increase the dosage of a patient’s medicine to double what is advised on the bottle. - This suggests that ‘everyday’ individuals are still susceptible to obeying destructive
authority figures.
