obedience: milgram's research Flashcards
1
Q
why did milgram (1963) want to study obedience?
A
- milgram examined justifications for acts of genocide offered by those accused at the nuremberg war criminal trials
- their defence was based on “obedience” - that they were just following orders from their superiors
2
Q
what was the aim of milgram’s study?
A
to understand how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person
3
Q
who was involved in milgram’s study?
A
- 40 american men aged 20-50
- from the area around new haven, conneticut, USA
- they were volunteers recruited through a newspaper advert and were paid $4.50 for participating
- study was supposedly on memory
4
Q
describe the baseline procedure
A
- volunteers arrived at milgram’s lab and were introduced to another pp (confederate of milgram’s)
- they drew lots to see who would be the teacher (T) and learner (L)
> the draw was fixed so the pp was always T - experimenter (E) was also involved
> also a confederate, dressed in a grey lab coat - L (mr wallace) was strapped to a chair and wired up with electrodes
- T (real pp) was given a small shock to experience for themselves
- L had to remember a pair of words
- each time he made an error, T delivered a stronger electric shock by pressing switches on a ‘shock machine’
> the switches were labelled from ‘slight shock’ to ‘danger - severe shock’ - when T got to 300 volts, L pounded on the wall and then gave no response on the next question
- at 315 volts he pounded on the wall again but was then silent for the rest of the procedure
5
Q
what were the four standard ‘prods’?
A
- prod 1 - ‘please continue’ or ‘please go on’
- prod 2 - ‘the experiment requires that you continue’
- prod 3 - ‘it is absolutely essential that you continue’
- prod 4 - ‘you have no other choice, you must go on’
6
Q
what were the baseline findings?
A
- every pp delivered all shocks up to 300 volts
- 12.5% stopped at 300 volts (‘intense shock’)
- 65% continued to 450 volts (highest level, they were fully obedient)
7
Q
what qualitative data did milgram collect?
A
observations such as:
- pps showed signs of extreme tension
- many of them were seen to ‘sweat, tremble, bite their kips, groan and dig their fingernails into their hands’
- 3 had ‘full-blown uncontrollable seizures’
8
Q
what other data did milgram find before the study and what does this show?
A
- before the study, he asked 14 psychology students to predict the pps’ behaviour
- the students estimated that no more than 3% of the pps would continue to 450 volts
- this shows that the findings were unexpected, and that the students underestimated how obedient people actually are
9
Q
how were the pps debriefed?
A
- all pps in the baseline study were debriefed afterwards
- they were also assured that their behaviour was entirely normal
- they were also sent a follow-up questionnaire and 84% said they were glad to have participated
10
Q
what conclusions did milgram draw?
A
- german people are not ‘different’
- american pps in his study were willing to obey orders even when they might harm another person
- he suspected there were certain factors in the situation that encouraged obedience, so decided to conduct further studies to investigate these
11
Q
evaluation: research support from hofling (1966)
A
- nurses were ordered by a doctor over the phone to administer 20mg of ‘astrogen’, double the dosage printed on the label (all fictional)
- 21/22 started to give medication until stopped by another nurse nearby
- when interviewed after, they all said that they were regularly asked by doctors to go against their training and the rules
- demonstrates real-world importance of the outcome of administering an unknown drug and dose
12
Q
evaluation: limitation, rank and jacobson (1977)
A
- replicated hofling’s method, but used a real drug which the nurses had heard of
- did not get similar results (2/18)
- they believed that the nurses’ knowledge of the drug, specifically the consequence of an overdose, meant they could justify their defiance to the doctor more easily
- highlights important factors that influence obedience
13
Q
evaluation: research support from french documentary about reality TV
A
- beauvois et al. (2012) focused on a game show made especially for the programme
- pps in ‘game’ believed they were contestants in a pilot episode for a new show called le leu de la mort (the game of death)
- they were paid to give (fake) electric shocks (ordered by presenter) to other pps (actors) in front of a studio audience
- 80% delivered the maximum shock of 460 volts to an apparently unconscious man
- their behaviour was almost identical to that of milgram’s pps: nervous laughter, nail-biting and other signs of anxiety
- this supports milgram’s original findings about obedience to authority, and demonstrates the findings were not just due to special circumstances
14
Q
evaluation: low internal validity, may not have been testing what he intended to test
A
- milgram reported that 75% of his pps said they believed the shocks were genuine
- martin orne and charles holland (1968) argued that pps behaved as they did because they didn’t really believe in the set up, so they were ‘play-acting’
- gina perry (2013) listened to tapes of milgram’s pps and reported that only about half of them believed the shocks were real
> 2/3 of these pps were disobedient - pps may have been responding to demand characteristics, trying to fulfil the aims of the study
15
Q
evaluation: not low internal validity
A
- charles sheridan and richard king (1972) conducted a study using a procedure like milgram’s
- pps gave real shocks to a puppy in response to orders from an experimenter
- despite the real distress to the animal, 54% of the men and 100% of the women gave what they thought was a fatal shock
- this suggests that the effects in milgram’s study were genuine because people behaved obediently even when the shocks were real
