Obedience (situational variables)

Question 1

What are the situational variables that Milgram crarried

Answer 1

• proximity
• uniform
• location

Question 2

What did he find/do in his variation of proximity

Answer 2

• he put both learner and teacher in the same room
• obedience rate dropped from 65% to 40%
• in the more dramatic version the teacher was told he had to force the learners hand on an electrical plate when they refused to
• the obedience rate dropped further to 30%

Question 3

What did he find/do in his variation of Location

Answer 3

• this time he set his experiment up in a run-down building

- obedience fell to 47.5%

Question 4

What did he find/do in the uniform variation

Answer 4

• experimenter was replaced with a normal civilian

- the obedience rate dropped down to 20%

Question 5

Give one strength of Milgram’s variations

Answer 5

• Research support
• Bickman, had 3 confederates dress in different outfits
• security guard, milkman, suit and tie
• asked passers by to pick up litter
• ppl were twice as likely to listen to the security guard than the one dressed in a jacket and tie

Question 6

Give a limitation of his variations study

Answer 6

• in the original Milgram study Orne and Holland criticised it due to the ppts finding out if the study was fake, there is an even high chance of demand characteristics in the variations making it unclear if results are genuinely the cause of obedience of other variables