Obedience: Milgram's Baseline Study Flashcards
Aim
Understand the behaviour of those Germans who followed orders to kill over 10 million people in the holocaust.
How did he do this?
Developed a method to test obedience to legitimate authority even when the command required destructive behaviour. This gave a reason to not obey.
Sample
40 men ages 20-50 from New Haven, America.
Gathered from newspapers and letters in post.
Unskilled workers to professionals.
Offered $4.50 for participation.
Volunteer Sample.
Who were they introduced to?
PP told they could drop out at any point and still keep money.
Introduced to an experimenter (confederate) who was ‘likeable’ and dressed in a technicians coat. Also another confederate who was the participant and referred to as Mr. Wallace.
Actual PP were the teachers.
What did the Teachers do?
Teacher gave confederate electric shocks for every mistake on a word recall task. Voltage increased 15v at a time (but they were fake).
A real shock of 45v was given to the teacher to make them believe they were real.
Teacher and learner in a separate room, teacher saw them being strapped up.
Procedure
Teacher sat in front of a machine with 30 switches from 15v to 450v and labelled from slight shock up to severe and XXX. Teacher could not hear confederate but could communicate.
300v: Learner heard pounding on wall.
315v: More pounding.
315v +: Nothing was heard.
What happened if the teacher protested?
Verbal prods were used to urge PP to continue.
They used 4 prods in order and if they still protested after the 4th they were allowed to leave, max shock recorded.
Milgram collected film footage of the PP reactions and dialogue. Post study interviews provided further qualitative data.
Findings
65% administered max 450v
100% continued to 300v, at this point 12.5% dropped out.
PP observed to tremble, sweat bite lips and dig fingernails into flesh.
35% exhibited nervous laughter.
3 PP had seizures.
Conclusions
Ordinary Americans are obedient to legit authority.
M suggested that a number of factors may explain obedience such as the perceived competence and reputation of the researcher and idea that participation was somehow advancing science.
Strength
Standardised, every PP had same experience.
2 confederates were always the same actors, the number and timing of learner’s mistakes was same for all PP and experimenters response was tightly scripted (same order and tone of voice).
Study is replicable and tested successfully e.g. Burger 2009.
Competing
Perry (2012) argues there were occasions when experimenter deviated from the script and one time gave 20 prods before allowing to leave.
Study may not be as standardised as believed.
Weakness
Task didn’t make sense.
PP may have only obeyed because they believed shocks were fake.
Orne and Holland (1968) argued that PP behaved the way they did because they didn’t believe the setup and guessed it was fake.
O+H said PP found it odd the experimenter was not administering the learning task and has little concern for the learner. Film footage of PP expressing suspicion supports this.
Questions internal validity of findings as M was not testing what he intended to test.
Application
Improve pilot training.
Tarrow (2000) describes how first officers often fail to monitor and challenge errors made by captain due to their legit authority
T draws parallels between behaviour in M study and the cockpit. 1st officers are hesitant to ask questions even when behaviour is putting others at risk.
T believes that training 1st officers in how to challenge the authority could prevent 20% plane crashes.
