research in obedience:milgram Flashcards
outline research into obedience
The aim of Milgram’s study was to investigate the effects of an authority on behaviour.Milgram had the naive participants meet with the confederate and gave them a rigged draw so that the naive participants would always become the teacher and the confederates would become the leaner.The teacher was told that they must administer a shock to the leaner if they answers a question wrong-they believed all shocks were real when they were in fact fake.Every time the leaner got a question wrong the shock level would increase,ranging from 15v to 450v.The teachers could not see the learners,but could they could hear their cries and pleas to stop.At different times throughout the experiment the learner would say different things,and at 300v they would be silent (assumed to have passed out or even died),and the teacher was encouraged to continue the shocks.The authority figure was the ‘investigator’ that was there to add pressure and would say ‘prods’ such as you must carry on if the teacher asked to leave.It was found that 100% of participants continued to give shocks up to 300v,and 65% gave shocks up to 450v.This was a complete shock to Milgram and his team as they expected a much lower percentage of people to “fully obey”
limitations of research into conformity
-criticised for breaking ethical guidelines
-participants were led to believe that the allocation of roles was random when it was fixed.They were also deceived into believing the electric shocks were real,causing psychological harm for the participants
e.g: when participants were giving shocks they were in discomfort as they pulled their hair,twitched nervous etc.=as there was real betrayal of trust and allowed participants to continue in such a distressed state that could’ve damaged the reputation of the psychologists and their research.
However,although the ethical guidelines were breached the findings from milgrams study have real life applications ,as it broadens our understanding on why we obey to authority figures.Also,the participants were debriefed at the end of the study.
strength of research into obedience
-research to support Milgram’s findings
Le jeu de la Mort is a french documentary about reality TV that includes a replication of Milgram’s study.Participants were paid to give fake electric shocks to other participants (confederates) when ordered to by the presenter.They found that 80% of the participants delivered the maximum shock to an apparently unconscious man.Their behaviour was almost identical to the qualitative data collected from milgram’s study (stutter,nail biting)
=supports milgram’s findings and suggests that do people conform to higher authority regardless of how harmful their actions are.
=strength reinforces the ecological validity of milgram’s conclusions as it demonstrates that his findings were not just a one off chance occurrence.
limitation of research into obedience
lacks generalisability.
=Milgram only recruited young, m/c white American men .= the findings are limited to the participants used and cannot be applied to wider society
-as the study only recruits men it suffers from androcentric bias as the research assumes the results found in men can be generalised to women
= limitation as his study lacks population validity =findings do not tell us how different groups of people would obey authority
