OBEDIENCE: MILGRAM'S RESEARCH

Question 1

MILGRAM’S (1963) PROCEDURE

Answer 1

• recruited 40 male ppts (20-50 yrs old) through newspaper adverts –> said he was looking for ppts for a study about memory
• offered $4.50
• rigged draw for their role, confederate was always the ‘learner’, whilst the true ppt was the ‘teacher’. ‘experimenter’ was played by an actor
• ppts told they could leave at any moment
• learner stopped to a chair and teacher instructed to give increasingly severe electric shocks each time the learner made a mistake on a word pairs learning task
• shocks rose up to 450 volts
• when 300 volts reached, learner pounded on the wall then gave no response to the next question
• if teacher = unsure about continuing, experimenter prodded them: ‘you have no choice, you must go on’

Question 2

FINDINGS

Answer 2

• all ppts went up to at least 300 volts
• 12.5% stopped at 300v
• 65% continued until 450v
• observations that the ppts showed signs of: extreme tension, many seen to ‘sweat, tremble, stutter, bite their lips.’
• three had ‘full-blown uncontrollable seizures’
• prior to the study, 14 students asked to predict the ppts’ behaviour –> no more than 3% of the ppts would continue to 450 volts – findings were unexpected
• all ppts were DEBRIEFED and sent a follow up questionnaire: 84% reported they felt glad to have participated.

Question 3

AO3: LOW INTERNAL VALIDITY

Answer 3

ORNE & HOLLAND (1968) argued ppts behaved in the way they did because they didn’t believe in the set up = they guessed it was not real
- therefore, Milgram was not testing what he intended to - LACKED INTERNAL VALIDITY
HOWEVER, similar study onducted where real shocks were given to a puppy. 54% of the male student ppts and 100% of the females delivered what they thought was a fatal shock
- suggest the effects in Milgram’s study were genuine because people behaved the same way with real shocks
- Milgram reported himself that 70% of his ppts believed shocks were genuine

Question 4

GOOD EXTERNAL VALIDITY

Answer 4

• at first glance may appear to lack external validity as it was conducted in a lab
  HOWEVER, the central feature of this situation was the relationship between the authority figure and the ppt.
  -Milgram argued that the lab environment accurately reflected wider authority relationships in real life
• supporting research on nurses on a hospital ward found that levels of obedience to unjustified demand by doctors were every high
• suggests the processes of obedience to authority that occurred in his study can be generalised to other situations so his findings do have something valuable to tell us about how obedience operates in real life.

Question 5

ETHICAL ISSUES

Answer 5

• led ppts to believe that the allocation of roles was random, but it was fixed - DECEPTION
• ppts believed electric shocks were real
• deception = betrayal of trust that could damage the reputation of psychologist and their research.