Obedience- Milgram’s Experiment

Question 1

What is obedience?

Answer 1

This is a form of social influence. Yielding to the real or imagined demands of an authority figure

E.g following orders from a teacher

Question 2

What is social influence?

Answer 2

When an individual’s behaviour, attitudes and emotions are affected by a real or imagined pressure from another

Question 3

What is dissent?

Answer 3

Rejecting or disobeying the demands of an authority figure

Question 4

What is the experiment for obedience?

Answer 4

Milgram (1963)

Question 5

What is the background to milgrams experiment?

Answer 5

The holocaust
• During World War II the nazi party instructed a mass extermination of millions of Jewish people

‘Germans are different’ hypothesis
• Afterwards many people believed that the nazi soldiers had a basic character flaw that rendered them more obedient to orders from an authority figure, even if the instructions were to kill other people

‘The banality of evil’ by Aredt (1963)
• in her book Arendt described Adolf Eichmann (a nazi lieutenant colonel and organiser of the holocaust) as an uninspired official with a mild mannered nature rather than being a monster

Question 6

Who is milgram?

Answer 6

• He was born in New York (1933) to Jewish parents
• Milgram’s immediate and extended family were effected by the holocaust

• Survivors of the camps went to go and live with milgram and his family in New York

• PhD in social psychology from Harvard university

• He was known for his controversial experiment on obedience conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale

Question 7

What was the aim of milgram’s experiment?

Answer 7

To investigate wether ordinary people would follow orders and give an innocent person a potentially harmful electric shock

Question 8

How were participants recruited and what did the participants consist of?

Answer 8

A newspaper advertisement in the local newspaper

Gender: male
NofP: 40
Age: Aged 20-50 years
Payment: $4.50
Occupation: all occupations (excluding students) to apply

Question 9

What sampling method did milgram use?

Answer 9

Self-selected sample (volunteer sampling) where participants responded to an advertisement

Question 10

Where did milgram’s study take place?

Answer 10

The study was conducted at yale university in a controlled laboratory setting

Question 11

What were the participants told at the beginning of the study?

Answer 11

That they could drop out at any point and still receive the money ($4.50)

Question 12

What does confederate mean?

Answer 12

A person who is secretly part of the experiment but pretends to be a participant

Acts in a predetermined way to manipulate and control the situation

Participants are unaware of the confederate

Question 13

Who acted as the authority figure in milgram’s study?

Answer 13

Mr Wallace

The experimenter was a likeable man wearing a grey lab coat

Question 14

What role was assigned to the participant?

Answer 14

The participant was already predetermined to play the role of the teacher

Question 15

Who did milgram’s participants consist of?
Gender, occupation, age

Answer 15

Gender-male
Occupation- all occupations (excluding students) to apply
Age- aged 20-50 years

Question 16

Who did milgram’s participants consist of?
Gender, occupation, age

Answer 16

Gender-male
Occupation- all occupations (excluding students) to apply
Age- aged 20-50 years

Question 17

Baseline procedure

Answer 17

-Participants were always the teacher as this was fixed (both cards said teacher) the Confederate just pretended his said learner

-The teacher was told that his job was to give the learner an electric shock for every mistake on a word recall task
-The voltage supposedly increased 14 V at a time, but in fact the shocks were fake
-Only one shock (45 volts) was given to the teacher at the time to make him believe the machine was real
-The learner was taken to a separate room and the teacher saw him being instructed into a chair
-The participant teacher sat next to a shock machine with 30 switches on it from 15 V to 450 V (switches were labelled from slight shock to danger ; severe shock and XXX)
-The pad associate task is explained to the participant who is to read a list of word pairs to Mr Wallace which you must remember
-The participant will then read out the first word of the pair and give four possible options as the answer. Mr Wallace must press one of four switches in front of him to indicate his answer which appears on the panel in front of the participant.
-Mr. Wallace gives three wrong answers to one correct answer.
-When the teacher delivered 300 V the learner was heard pounding on the wall at 315 V more pounding was heard but from there are no further sound was heard
-If the participant teacher protested the experiment to use a series of standardised prompts (verbal prods) to urge participants to continue

Question 18

What were the four verbal prods in Milgram’s experiment?

Answer 18

“Please continue”
“The experiment requires that you continue”
“It is absolutely essential that you continue”
“You have no choice, you must go on”

Question 19

What happened if participants protested after the fourth verbal prod?

Answer 19

They were allowed to leave and the maximum shock delivered was recorded.

Or else they went the maximum shock of 450V

Question 20

RESULTS- QUANTITIVE FINDINGS

Answer 20

100
- 1005 obedience up to 300 volts

26
- 26 out of 40 participants went up to 450 volts

14
- 14 participants stopped between 300-375 volts

65
- obedience rate as a %

Question 21

RESULTS- QUALITATIVE FINDINGS

Answer 21

Subjects were observed to

Sweat, tremble, stutter, bite their lips, groan and dig their fingertips/nails into their flesh

Regular occurrence of of nervous laughter , which some participants developed into uncontrollable seizures

Question 22

Why people obey-explaining the results of Milgram’s obedience studies

Answer 22

Buffers- anything?(e.g the wall) that prevents those who obey from being aware of the full impact of their actions

Perception of legitimate authority - the experiment was presented as having status e.g wore a grey lab coat and carried a clipboard

Lack of personal responsibility - many participant asked whose responsibility was it if the learner was harmed and showed visible relief when the experiment took responsibility

Verbal prods - participant encouraged to continue by the experimenter e.g you must continue, The experiment requires that you continue

Legitimacy of setting - took place at Yale University so participants thought the researchers were experts

Question 23

Evaluating Milgram with another experiment of obedience
(You can also use this as a piece of evaluation for agency theory)

Answer 23

Hofling et al. (1966)
-A field experiment

Hofling et al found….
-Stage to study in a hospital setting (a field experiment)
-A Confederate doctor telephoned a nurse working on a ward late at night, asking her to administer twice the daily dose of a drug to a patient
-Against hospital policy, the doctor informed the nurse that she would sign the prescription later
-A total of 21 out of 22 nurses followed the doctors orders and attempted to give the medication to the patient

They concluded that
Several nurses justified their behaviour as being a result of the hierarchy of authority at the hospital

How does this relate to Milgram‘s research?
Increases the external viability of Milgram‘s findings

Question 24

GENERALISABILITY

• Evaluation

Answer 24

P - the sample consisted of 40 man from New Haven, America. They were all volunteered to the study after responding to the advert.
CA - that said, the sample included a range of individuals in terms of occupations and socio economic status and a range of ages

E - no women took part in study, making it androcentric. They were all volunteers, could’ve been more motivated to take apart.
CA - for example, some were unskilled workers and some where professionals and they were aged 20 to 50 so he had a representative sample

EV - we can’t generalise the findings to the wider population, the sample used is not representative
CA - this means that the study could be generalised to other people in the target population which helped Milgrim to see whether the ordinary American would in fact obey destructive command

Question 25

RELIABILITY

• evaluation

Answer 25

P - a strength of Milgram‘s procedure is that it was standardised, meaning that every participant had the exact same experience
CA - however, Perry (2012) argues that they were occasions when the experiment deviated from the script

E - the two confederates were always played by the same actors, the number and timing of the learners mistakes was the same for every participant and the experiment is responses were supposedly tightly scripted for example, the prods were always delivered in the same order and tone of voice
CA - for example, in one instance, he allegedly gave us many as 20 prods before allow allowing a participant to leave

EV - this is important because it means that the study is replicable and has been tested, successfully (e.g burger 2009 bracket) increasing the reliability of Milgram’s study and his results
CA - this departure from the procedure suggests that Milgram’s study may not be as standardised and therefore as reliable as he claimed

Question 26

APPLICATION

• evaluation

Answer 26

P - Milgram’s findings have been applied to improve pilot training

E - Tarnow (2000) describes how first officers often fail to monitor and challenge errors made by the captain due to his/her legitimate authority. That training first officers in how to challenge the authority could prevent plane crashes.

T - this has led to training to improve cockpit behaviour and potentially save lives

Question 27

VALIDITY

-evaluation

Answer 27

P - a weakness is that participants may only have a bath because they did not believe that the shocks were real
CA - the findings of Milgram were supported by study in realistic environment, Hofling et al.
CA - Milgram counter argued these claims as he observed the anxiety and stress levels

E - Orne and Holland argued that participants behaved the way they did because they didn’t really believe in the set up, participants guest it wasn’t real shocks but went along with it
CA - individuals followed orders from an authority figure, even if it could lead to harm
CA - participants would have not shown such extreme reactions to the task if they didn’t really believe they were giving electric shocks

EV - this causes into question the internal validity of the findings of the study, as Milgram was not testing what he intended to test
CA - therefore, there is external validity to Milgram’s findings
CA - therefore, we can say Milgram’s study did have high internal validity

P - lacks validity
E - lacked mundane realism
EV - lacks ecological validity