Obedience: Milgram's Research Flashcards
1
Q
Obedience: Milgram’s Research
Baseline Procedure
A
- 40 American men volunteered to take part in a study, supposedly on memory.
- Participants were introduced to each other (one being a confederate) and they drew lots to decide who would be the Teacher and who would be the Learner. This was fixed so the participant would always be the teacher.
- The Experimenter acted as an authority figure ordering the Teacher to give increasingly greater electric shocks to a Learner in a different room.
2
Q
Obedience: Milgram’s Research
Baseline Findings
A
- Every participant delivered shocks up to 300V, with only 12.5% stopping at this level.
- 65% continued to the highest level of 450V, meaning they were fully obedient.
- Milgram collected qualitative data through observation: participants experienced signs of extreme anxiety such as trembling and sweating - three had seizures.
- All participants were debriefed and assured their responses were completely normal - in a follow-up questionnaire 86% said they were glad to have participated.
3
Q
Obedience: Milgram’s Research
Student Predictions
A
- Milgram asked 14 psychology students to predict the participant’s behaviour.
- They estimated only 3% of the participants would continue to 450V.
- This shows that the findings of the study were unexpected as the students underestimated how obedient they would be.
4
Q
Milgram (1963): Evaluation
Research Support
A
- Milgram’s findings were replicated in a French documentary made about reality TV.
- The documentary focused on a game show where participants participated in a game where they believed they were the contestants for a pilot episode.
- They were paid to give fake shocks to other participants (confederates) in front of a studio audience.
- 80% of the participants delivered the maximum shock of 460V to an apparently unconscious man.
- Their behaviour was very similiar to Milgram’s research, showing high anxiety.
This supports Milgram’s findings about obedience to authority and demonstrates the findings were not just due to special circumstances.
5
Q
Milgram (1963): Evaluation
Low Internal Validity
Limitation
A
- Milgram’s procedure may not have been testing what he intended.
- Milgram reported 75% of participants believed the shocks were real.
- However, it was suggested participants did not really believe in the set-up.
- Perry reviewed the tapes of Milgram’s research and concluded only half of them thought the shocks were genuine. 2/3 of these participants were disobedient.
This suggests participants may have been responding to demand characteristics.
6
Q
Milgram (1963): Evaluation
Sheridan and King
A
- Sheridan and King (1972) conducted a study similar to Milgram’s.
- Participants gave real shocks to a puppy in response to orders from an experimenter.
- Despite the real distress of the animal, 54% of men and 100% of women gave what they thought was a fatal shock.
This suggests the effects in Milgram’s study were genuine because people behaved obediently even when the shocks were real.
7
Q
Milgram (1963): Evaluation
Ethical Issues
A
- There are ethical concerns about Milgram’s research.
- Firstly, the participants in this study were decieved into believing the roles were random and that it was a study about memory. They were also decieved to think that they were giving real shocks to the Learner.
- Milgram dealt with this by debriefing the participants.
- However, he was still criticised for this because deception in psychological studies can have serious consequences for participants - the participants were distressed in the study.
