obedience - milgram baseline Flashcards
definition for obedience
form of social influence where an individual follows a direct order
- the person issuing the order is usually a figure of authority who has the power to punish
2 examples that could be used to highlight displays of obedience & explain how
- nazi’s during the holocaust
- categorised people by race –> inferior if not ‘aryan’
- concentration camps = forced labour & executions
- in ww2, around 7.5 million jews were killed
- death camps eg. auschwitz
- medical experiments eg. twins - charlie company - mai lai massacre
- women killed due to soldiers aggression in vietnamese village
- men shoot fleeing vietnamese & bayonet others
- throw grenades into houses
- rounded up civilians & killed with no context
- dozen+ women & children are shot whilst praying
- guarding soldiers shoot civilians
when was the study conducted
1963
aim
investigate whether germans were particularly obedient to authority figures and how far would ordinary people go when obeying an instruction which could potentially harm another person
procedure
- 40 randomly selected male (aged 20-50) volunteers via a newspaper advert
- fixed draw between 2 participants –> 1 confederate & 1 naive
- experimenter dressed in grey lab coat
- learner taken to room with electrodes attached to arms
- teacher/experimenter went to room next door with electric shock generator & row of switches from 15V to 450V
- teacher read list of words to learner who’s tested by recalling it’s partner from a list of 4 possible choices
- teacher told to administer electric shock each time learner was wrong (increased 15V each time)
- if teacher refused/hesitated, prods were given eg. ‘please continue’ & ‘you have no choice but to continue
results
- 65% of participants (teachers) continued to 450V (highest)
- 100% reached 300V
conclusion
- ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to an extent of killing an innocent human being
- thus, obedience is ingrained in us all
evaluation of milgrams baseline study - AO1
milgram (1963)
brief outline of:
aim -
procedure -
results -
conclusion -
evaluation of milgrams baseline study - AO3
+)
P: practical application
E:
- findings of research have been used to explain how air crashes may occur from first officers continuing to obey the captains authority even if they believe it is the wrong decision
- in military training to explain how destructive behaviour may occur in war & how to stop it
T: thus, this support milgram’s original findings about obedience to authority & demonstrates that the findings were not just due to special circumstances
+)
P: research to support
E: beauvious et. al (2012) replicated findings in french documentary made about reality tv
T: highlights value of research in society
-)
P: ethical issues
E: milgram deceived participants by allowing them to believe the allocation to teacher/learner was random but it was fixed
T: research does not adhere to ethical guidelines
-)
P: low internal validity
E: orne and holland (1968) argued the participants behaved the way they did due to guessing the shocks were fake so milgram didn’t study what he intended to. gina perrys (2013) research confirmed this as the listened to the tapes of milgram’s study and many participants expressed doubts about the shocks
T: participants may have been responding to demand characteristics
-)
P: low generalisability
E: sample consisted of volunteers which are likely to be obedient but they tend to listen & take the procedure seriously which is representative of those in real life situations where powers being misused. also, a sample of 40 is quite large but anomalies may spoil the results. the original sample was all male (doesn’t generalise to women) & american (doesn’t generalise to other cultures). also, may be ‘time-locked’ in early 1960s with a rather deferential culture
T: difficult to apply findings to wider population
