Obedience: Milgram's Research Flashcards
Obedience
Form of social influence in which individual follows direct order.
Aim
Wanted to know why a high proportion of German people supported Hitler’s plan to slaughter over 6 million Jews, etc. Wanted to know if Germans were different or obedient.
Procedure
Reecruited 40 males ages 20-50 through newspaper adverts. Unskilled & professionals. Ad said he was looking for them for a study about memory. Confederates was learner & experimenter. True participant was teacher.
Learner was strapped to chair in another room wired with electrodes. Teacher required to give learner a shock when made a mistake on learning word pairs. It wasn’t real shock but the true participants didnt know that. Shock level rose each time and learner pounded on wall when intense shock and gave no response to next q. Then experimenter told teacher that absense of response means wrong answer. If teacher felt unsure about continuing, experimenter used sequence of 4 standard prods which were repeated if necessary.
Please continue or Please go on
Experiment requires that you continue
Absolutely essential that you continue
You have no other choice, you must go on.
Findings
No participants stopped below 300 volts. 5 stopped at 300. 26 stopped at 450. Many sweated, bit their lips, dug their fingernails. 3 had seizures. Also were sent a questionaire and 84% were glad to have participated.
Weakness (Orne & Holland)
Low internal validity. They argued the participants guessed the shocks werent real. In that case Milgram wasnt testing what he intented to. Lacked internal validity. Sheridan & King conducted similar exp with real shocks given to puppy. Despite real shocks some thought it wasnt real. This shows Milgram’s exp was genuine as people behaved same way with real shocks. Milgram said 70% of his participants believed shocks was real.
Strength (Hofling)
Good external validity. The relationship was good between experimenter and participant. Thats the central feature. He found out that most nurses obeyed to unjustified demands from doctors. Milgram’s exp can be generalised to other situations.
Strength
Supporting replication. A french game did the same exp as Milgram. The findings were quite similar. Shows Milgram’s findings weren’t just a one off chance occurence.
Weakness (Baumrind)
Ethicaal issues. Milgram led participants to believe roles allocation was random but it was actually fixed. He also made them believe shocks were real. Shesaw deception as betrayal of trust that could damage reputation of psychologists.
