Obedience To Authority

Question 1

What is obedience

Answer 1

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

Question 2

Proceedure of milgram

Answer 2

Placed an advert in a newspaper asking for male participants to take part in a study about the effect of punishment on learning. 40 were invited to the psychology department of Yale uni and were met by the experimenter who was wearing a white lab coat, however he was confederate. participants were also introduced to a 47 year old man called Mr Wallace who was also a confed who pretended to have a weak heart. Mr. Wallace and participant had to pick note out of hat to determine what role they would have, either teacher or learner, however always rigged so naive participant teacher. The participant was then told to punish the leaner every time he made a mistake on a memory test by administering an electric shock, increased voltage for every mistake.

Learner was taken to room and hooked to electric shock machine. Teacher placed in adjoining room with electric shock machine, controls and the experimenter. The electric shock machine and the controls were fake but very convincing. To administer shock, teacher had to press switches on the shock machine controls. Each switch has a voltage rating, starting at 15 then increasing by increments of 15 until it gets 450 volts. Each group of 4 switches was labelled ‘slight shock’, ‘moderate shock’, ‘danger severe shock’, ‘XXX’ for the final set of switches. As the shocks became more severe, mr Wallace screamed and demanded to be released and kicked the walls and complained about his weak heart. He started to refuse answering questions and then went silent.

Question 3

How did the experimenter ensure the naive participants kept going?

Answer 3

Gave 4 prompts
- please continue
- the experiment requires you to continue
- it is absolutely essential that you continue
- you have no choice, you must continue

Question 4

Findings

Answer 4

100% went to 300 volts (when mr Wallace banged on the wall and stopped answering) and 65% went all the way up to 450V. Participants felt high levels of stress during the experiments and showed symptoms of sweating, trembling and in some cases anxious and hysterical laughter. Despite this, most were willing to inflict potentially lethal shocks to a man with weak heart

Question 5

Evaluation weakness

Answer 5

• participants were deceived about the true nature of the experiment as they were told it was about memory when it was really about obedience (this also means they didn’t give their informed consent). Participants were also lead to believe shocks were real and that that mr Wallace was a real participant with a weak heart. However this deception was necessary to avoid demand characteristics and therefore increase validity
• participants were extremely distressed, some even hysterical, and May have thought that they killed mr Wallace, so they were not protected from psychological harm, however milgram didn’t expect them to obey so this psychological harm was not anticipated
• several participants asked to leave but they were told not allowed, this violates right to withdraw
• sample unrepresentative as all participants were white American males. Therefore results cannot be generalised to women or other cultures. Howler this study has been replicated with women and the obedience rates were not significantly different

Question 6

Strengths milgram

Answer 6

Despite ethical issues, many psychologists feel that after conducting a cost benefit analysis, the study was worthwhile. We now know that most people could potentially do the same thing, leading to people to take more responsibility and not blindly follow orders. The participants did not suffer any true long term emotional disturbances and 84 percent said they were happy to have taken part and that they had learnt something important from the experience.