Obedience Studies Flashcards
What is the key obedience study?where was it conducted? What did it aim to investigate?
Milgram 1961
Conducted at Yale University
His experiment was designed to investigate what factors affect conformity
What were the original results from the experiment?
- every participant shocked over 300v
- every participant showed signs of distress
- 68% continued the experiment wall the way to 450V
What is the way of remembering how to evaluate a study?
GRAVE
Generalisability Reliability Application Validity Ethics
Generalisability of migrams study?
Low ecological validity
Lacks temporal validity as it was done in the 60s and peoples morals and opinions may have changed
Reliability of Milgrams study?
Lab research meant he could keep things under control
The repeated studies have found the same results showing that the obedience of people is still the same as it was in the 60s
-Test re test reliability
Application of Milgrams study?
The research can be used to teach other about obedience and that they should be aware that they can opt out of a situation they don’t feel comfortable in
Validity of Milgrams study - demand characteristics
Many argue that the behaviour of the participants was largely influenced by demand characteristics
Validity bias of Milgrams study?
Milgram was found guilty of publication bias and he only published findings which supported his hypotheses
Ethical issues?
- Psychological and physical harm
- Confidentiality - was well taken care of
- Right to withdraw- participants were prompted to keep going by the experimenter
- Informed consent and Deception - Milgram didn’t fully have informed consent as the participants weren’t aware to the extent of what they were doing & they were decepted as they thought they were actually harming people
How did Milgram debrief his participants?
Participants had to wait 11 months until Milgram sent out a full report of the experiment to his participants
What was Bickmans study?
Looking into the power of uniforms on obedience
What was Bickmans method?
In NY an actor dressed as either a milk man,security guard or a civilian.The actor walked around the streets telling people to do things such as pick up littler
What were the results of Bickmans study?what does this suggest?
People obeyed to the security guard the most (38%) then the civilian (19%) then the milk man (14%)
This suggests that the type of uniform you wear affects someone’s obedience towards you
What are the strengths and weaknesses of Bickmans doing his study in the real world?
Strengths
- high ecological validity
- uses a wide range of people
Weaknesses
- takes a while to get the data
- some variables can’t be controlled e.g busy streets
