Obedience- Milgram's research

Question 1

define obedience

Answer 1

a type of social influence whereby somebody acts in response to a direct order from a perceived authoritative figure

Question 2

state the year Milgram conducted his baseline obedience research

Answer 2

1963

Question 3

state the sample used in Milgram’s baseline study

Answer 3

40 male volunteers

Question 4

outline the role of the confederates in Milgram’s study

Answer 4

two confederates were used in the study:
- one was the experimenter issuing the orders to the naive participant
- one was rigged to be the learner

Question 5

outline the role of the naive participant in Milgram’s study

Answer 5

the naive participants were assigned the role of the teacher- they tested the learner on their ability to learn word pairs; if the learner got the answer wrong the teacher was required to issue increasingly strong electric shocks

Question 6

state the range of the electric shocks

Answer 6

15 volts to 450 volts

Question 7

describe the results of Milgram’s baseline experiment

Answer 7

• all participants went to 300 volts
• 65% continued to maximum level of 450 volts

Question 8

outline the two ways in which the participants were deceived

Answer 8

1. naive participant thought they were randomly assigned to learner and teacher, whereas it was rigged so the confederate was always assigned the role of learner
2. naive participant thought they were issuing real electric shocks to learner

Question 9

state one way in which Milgram addressed this deception

Answer 9

he debriefed participants at the end of the study and sent follow-up questionnaire

Question 10

describe what conclusion can be drawn from this experiment

Answer 10

people are willing to obey orders from an authoritative figure even if it goes against moral principles