Obedience: Milgram's research

Question 1

Describe the procedure of Milgram’s research.

Answer 1

40 male American volunteers assigned to learner or teacher.

Rigged: the real participant was always assigned to ‘teacher’.

The teacher had to test a learners recall of word pairs.

Each time the answer was wrong, the teacher had to administer an electric shock (fake) of increasing voltage.

15-450 V in intervals of 15.

At 300 V the learner would bang on the wall and complain. At 315 V they went silent.

If the teacher tried to stop the experiment they received a number of verbal prods.

Question 2

Baseline findings.

Answer 2

100% of participants progressed to 315 V.

12.5% stopped at 315 V.

65% continued to 450 V.

Qualitative data - extreme anxiety, sweating, shaking, nail biting.

Question 3

Evaluation points.

Answer 3

+ Research support: Sheridan and King. 54% males and 100% females delivered a ‘fatal’ shock to puppies.

• Ethical concerns: Baumrind - deception is psychologically damaging.

+ Standardised procedure: increased reliability and internal validity.

• Orne and Holland - Perry: demand characteristics