Obedience - Milgram (1963) Flashcards
Aim
Milgram wanted to find out if ordinary American citizens would obey an unjust order from an authority figure and inflict pain on another person because they were instructed to.
Procedure
- Milgram’s sample consisted of 40, male, american ppts.
- They were all volunteers who had responded to an advert in a local paper, which offered $4.50 to take part in an experiment on ‘punishment and learning’.
- The 40 ppts were all invited to a laboratory at Yale University and upon arrival they met with the experimenter and another participant, Mr Wallace, who were both confederates.
- The experimenter explained that one person would be randomly assigned the role of the teacher and the other, a learner.
- However, the real participant was always the teacher.
- The experimenter explained that the teacher, the real ppt, would read the learner a series of word pairs and then test their recall.
- The learner, who was positioned in an adjacent room, would indicate his choice using a system of lights.
- The teacher was instructed to administer an electric shock every time the learner made a mistake and to increase the voltage after each mistake.
- The teacher watched the learner being strapped to the electric chair and was given a sample electric shock to convince them that the procedure was real.
- The learner wasn’t actually strapped to the chair and gave predetermined answers to the test.
- As the electric shock increased, the learner’s screams, which were recorded, became louder and more dramatic.
- The experiment continued until the teacher refused to continue, or 450 volts were reached.
- If the teacher tried to stop the experiment, the experimenter would respond with a series of prods, such as, ‘The experiment requires that you continue’.
- Following the experiment, the participants were debriefed.
Findings
- All of the real participants went to at least 300 volts.
- 65% continued until the 450 volts.
Conclusion
Under the right circumstances, ordinary people will obey unjust orders.
Weakness
Milgram’s study has been heavily criticised by Baumrind for breaking numerous ethical guidelines:
1) Deception - Milgram deceived his ppts as he claimed that the experiment was on ‘punishment and learning’, when it was actually measuring obedience. He pretended that the learner was receiving electric shocks. They also didn’t know that both the experimenter and the learner were confederates. Due to this, the ppts did not have informed consent.
2) Right to withdraw - It was very difficult to withdraw from the experiment, as the experimenter prompted the ppts to continue. Considering that the ppts were paid to take part in the experiment, it may have caused them to feel obliged to continue (although they were told that they could have the money regardless).
3) Protection - Many of the ppts were reported feeling exceptionally stressed and anxious whilst partaking in the experiment and therefore weren’t protected from psychological harm. This is an issue, as Milgram didn’t respect his ppts. Moreover, ppts were reported feeling very guilty following the experiment, knowing that they could have harmed another person.
Strength
- Despite ethical issues, it must be noted that it was essential for Milgram to deceive his ppts and remove their right to withdraw in order to test their obedience and henceforth produce internally valid results.
- In addition, he did debrief his ppts following the experiment and 83.7% of the participants said that they were happy to have taken part in the experiment and contribute to scientific research.
Weakness
- Orne criticised Milgram’s study claiming that it lacked internal validity because the ppts were not fooled by the set-up. They didn’t really believe that they were hurting the victim, so the study tells us little or nothing about obedience in a real life setting.
- Orne reported that they were stressed because they had to play along with the research. If they did not believe the shocks were real then why would they have given such extreme shocks when the task was so trivial? Why was the teacher needed? Couldn’t the experimenter give the shocks?
- Holland replicated Milgram’s experiment and found that, when questioned later, 75% of the ppts said they didn’t believe the deception.
Strength
- In response to Orne’s criticism, Milgram distributed a follow-up questionnaire, a year later, of which only a small percentage reported being dubious about the nature of the study. Film footage also displayed the ppts to be considerably distressed when giving the shocks. This wouldn’t have been the case unless they had known the true intentions of the research.
- Milgram responded saying that if they had seen through the experiment, then it would have been easy for them to report so on the questionnaire to excuse their behaviour. This is testimony that they believed they were giving shocks.
- Rosenhan did the same and found that 70% reported that they did believe the deception. Sheridan and King asked ppts to give electric shocks to puppies in increasing strength. The shocks were real and 100% of the female ppts gave the maximum shocks, indicating that Milgram’s results were genuine as people behaved the same way with real shocks.
Weakness
Low population validity
Milgram used a biased sample of 40 male volunteers, which means we are unable to generalise the findings to other populations, particularly females and therefore cannot conclude if female participants would respond in a similar way.
Weakness
Low ecological validity
Milgram’s study has been criticised for lacking ecological validity. Milgram rated obedience in a laboratory which is different to real-life situations of obedience, where people are asked to follow more subtle instructions, rather than administering electric shocks. As a result, we are unable to generalise the findings to real life situations of obedience and cannot conclude that people would obey less severe instructions in a similar way.
Strength
The central feature of the situation was the relationship between the authority figure and the participant. Milgram argued that the lab environment did accuracy reflect wider authority relationships in real life. There is research support for his claims from Hofling et al (1966). Hofling studied nurses on a hospital ward and found far the levels of obedience to unjustified demands by doctors to be very high. This suggests that the processes of obedience that occurred in Milgram’s lab can be generalised to other situations. Therefore his study can be generalised to other situations and his findings do have value to explain how obedience operates in real life.
