Obedience To Authorit

Question 1

What is obedience?

Answer 1

Obedience is behaving as instructed to by an authority figure. Authority figures have status and or power over others.

Question 2

What was the procedure for milgram experiment?

Answer 2

Milgram placed an advert in a newspaper asking for male participant to take part in a study on the effect of punishment on learning. 40 were then invited to the Yale psychology department and were met by the experimenter, a man in a lab coat. The man then introduced the participants to another 47 year old man called mr Wallace who supposedly had a weak and was said to be another participant, when in actual fact he was a confederate with a normal heart. Both mr Wallace and the participant were asked to pick what role they would assume out of a hat, but it was rigged so mr Wallace was always the learner and the real participant is the teacher. The participant had to give the learner a shock for every wrong answer the learner gave with an increased voltage per wrong answer.

Learner was taken into a room and hooked to an electric shock machine and the teacher was taken to the adjoining room with the electric shock machine controls and the experimenter. The controls were fake, but very convincing. In order to apply the shocks had to press buttons on the machine according to the voltage they need to give. Each switch had a voltage rating starting at 15V then going up in 15s until it reaches its max 450. Each group of 4 switches also had labels, going from slight shock -> moderate shock -> danger server shock -> XXX. As shocks increased, mr Wallace demanded to be released from the experiment, screamed, kicked the wall, complained about his heart, refusing to answer the questions then finally went silent (after 300V)

Question 3

If the naive participant wanted to quit the experiment, what did the experimenter do?

Answer 3

He gave the naive participant 4 prompts to ensure he carries on with the experiment:

• please continue
• the experiment requires that you continue
• it is absolutely essential that you continue
• you have no choice, you must continue

Question 4

What are the findings of milgrams experiment?

Answer 4

100% of participants went to 300V (this was up until he went silent). Then 65% went fully to 450V. Participants felt high levels of stress and showed symptoms of sweating, trembling, anxious, and hysterical laughter. Despite this most were obedient and willing to inflict potentially lethal shocks onto a man with a weak heart.

Question 5

Evaluation milgram?

Answer 5

• Participants deceived about true natures of experiment as they were told it was about memory not obedience. This also means they didn’t give thier informed consent. Participants were also led to believe that the electric shocks they were administering were real and that mr Wallace was another participant with a weak heart. However this deception was nececarty to avoid demand characteristic, improving the studies validity
• were not protected to psychological harm as participants became extremely distressed, some thingkink they had actually killed mr Wallace. However milgram did not expect participants to obey so this could not have been predicted
• violated the right to withdraw, participants wanted to leave but were not allowed
  + despite being very unethical, after conducting a cost benefit analysis, psychologists feel that the study was worthwhile. We know know that we could do the same thing, leading us to take more responsibility and not just to blindly follow orders. Participants didn’t suffer any long term emotional disturbances and 84% of the participants said they were happy to have taken part and that it was an experience to learn from
• sample is unrepresentative. All participants were white American males, therefore there is gender and cultural bias. However study was replicated with women and obedience rates were not significantly different.