S - Milgram Flashcards
Aim
The aim of this study was to investigate the process of obedience by testing how far an individual will go in obeying an authority figure, even when the command breaches the moral code that an individual should not hurt another person against his will.
Background
From 1933-45, millions of innocent people were systematically slaughtered on command. Such inhumane actions may have originated in the mind of one person, but they could only have been carried out on such a massive scale because large numbers of people obeyed.
History and observation suggest that for many people obedience is such an ingrained behavioural tendency that it will override training in ethics, empathy and moral values. This is because, when given extreme commands by legitimate authority figures, subordinates adopt an agentic state where they become the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes.
The adoption of the agentic state can account for horrific acts committed in the name of obedience eg the atrocities of WWII, the Balkans conflicts, the atrocities in Rwanda.
Method
Controlled observation
The study took place in a laboratory at Yale University so conditions could be controlled eg who was teacher / learner, the learner’s recorded
Sample
40 male participants aged between 20 and 50 years, from the New Haven area were obtained by a newspaper advertisement and direct mail solicitation which asked for volunteers to participate in a study of memory and learning at Yale University. There was a wide range of occupations in the sample. Participants were paid $4.50 for simply presenting themselves at the laboratory.
Procedure
The study took place in a laboratory at Yale University.
Prior to the study, the 14 Yale Seniors were provided with a detailed description of the experimental situation. They were asked to reflect carefully on it, and to predict the behaviour of 100 hypothetical subjects. More specifically, they were instructed to plot the distribution of obedience of “100 Americans of diverse occupations and ranging in age from 20 to 50 years” who were placed in the experimental condition.
The 40 participants in the experimental group were always given the role of teacher (through a fixed lottery) and saw the leamer (a confederate) strapped into a chair with (non-active) electrodes attached to his arms. They were given a trial shock of 45 volts to simulate genuineness.
The ‘teacher’ then sat in front of an electric shock generator in an adjacent room. He had to conduct a paired word test on the learner and give him an electric shock of increasing intensity for every wrong answer. The machine had 30 switches ranging from 15-450 volts, in 15 volt increments.
The learner (Mr Wallace, a 47 year old, mild-mannered and likable accountant) produced (via a tape recording) a set of predetermined responses giving approximately three wrong answers to every correct one. At 300 volts he pounded on the wall and thereafter made no further replies.
If the ‘teacher’ turned to the experimenter for advice on whether to proceed, the experimenter responded with a series of standardised prods eg “Please continue / Please go on.
The study finished when either the ‘teacher’ refused to continue (was disobedient/defiant) or reached 450 volts (was obedient). The participant was then fully debriefed.
Data was gathered through observations made by both the experimenter who was in the same room as the participant and others who observed the process through one-way mirrors. Most sessions were recorded on magnetic tape, occasional photographs were taken through the one-way mirrors and notes were made on unusual behaviours.
Results
26 participants were obedient, 14 disobedient/defiant.
- Many participants showed signs of extreme stress whilst administering the shocks eg sweating, trembling, stuttering, laughing nervously. 3 had full-blown uncontrollable seizures.
- On completion of the test many obedient participants heaved sighs of relief, mopped their brows, or nervously fumbled cigarettes. Some shook their head, apparently in regret; some remained calm throughout
Conclusions
- Inhumane acts can be done by ordinary people.
- People, will obey others whom they consider legitimate authority figures even if what they are asked to do goes against their moral beliefs.
- People obey because certain situational features lead them to suspend their sense of autonomy and become an agent of an authority figure.
- Individual differences, such as personality, influence the extent to which people will be obedient.
Method Evaluation
A strength of a controlled observation is that you have control over extraneous variables as participants are tested in a controlled environment.
This means that the results are likely to be more valid as it can be seen how the participants behaviour is affected by the conditions contrived by the experimenter.
In Milgram’s study it can be clearly see how the authority figure influenced the level of obedience shown by the participants in this study.A strength of a controlled observation is that you have control over extraneous variables as participants are tested in a controlled environment.
This means that the results are likely to be more valid as it can be seen how the participants behaviour is affected by the conditions contrived by the experimenter.
In Milgram’s study it can be clearly see how the authority figure influenced the level of obedience shown by the participants in this study.
A weakness is that controlled observations lack ecological validity.
This means that the behaviours observed may not be reflective ofreal lifebehaviours as they areobserved in controlled artificial environments such as a lab type environments.
In Milgram’s study they were tested at Yale university in a lab type setting with an unfamiliarauthorityfigure asking them to carry out an unfamiliar task-giving electric shocks to a stranger in response to a word task. The task and environment could be said to be unreflective of obedience in real life.
Data
The main quantitative data generated by Milgram’s study comprised the percentages of participants who were prepared to administer electric shocks to the ‘learner’ up to 300 volts(100 per cent) and all the way up to 450 volts (65 per cent). This quantitative data proved immensely valuable as it meant that he would have something (the percentage of participants prepared to administer electric shocks to the ‘learner’ all the way up to the 450 volt maximum) that could be compared from one variation of his study to another and from one replication of his study in one country to another replication of it in another country. The qualitative data consisted of his descriptions of how those in the role of ‘teacher’ behaved as they progressed up the electric shock generator (e.g. sweating and trembling) and also the quotes of what they said as they did this. His study benefited hugely from the collection of both types of data as, without the qualitative data, we wouldn’t know anything about the feelings of the participants as they administered the electric shocks. What the qualitative data reveals is that they may have done what they were told to do by the ‘experimenter’, but they seemed to do so without pleasure and in the context of great emotional discomfort
Ethics
Protection of participants - Participants were exposed to extremely stressful situations that may have the potential to cause psychological harm. Many of the participants were visibly distressed.
Signs of tension included trembling, sweating, stuttering, laughing nervously, biting lips and digging fingernails into palms of hands. Three participants had uncontrollable seizures, and many pleaded to be allowed to stop the experiment. Milgram described a businessman reduced to a “twitching stuttering wreck”
Reliability
A strength of this study is that it hashigh internal reliability.
Internal reliability assesses the consistency of the measures within the study. If a study has high internal reliability you should be able to replicate it to check for external reliability also.
InMilgram’sstudy there are a high level of controls, a standardised procedure and standardised instructions. The experimenter was told to reply with the sameprods and prompts”The experiment requires you to continue” which means that none of the participants received different responses which could affecttheir judgement. Alsothe learner always gave 3 wrong answers and one right answer to ensure obedience is tested in the same way for allparticipantstherefore it should have internal reliability.
Validity
Sampling Bias
This sample is difficult to make generalisation from due to it being biased.
This means that the results from the participants studied cannot be generalized to the wider population.
The sample was androcentric (all males) and therefore cannot be generalized to females and also they were all from the Stanford area. Also they were all volunteers which could make them atypical of the general population.
Ethnocentrism
The study is based on one culture
Explain..
Therefore it cannot be generalised to the rest of the world
Evidence..
Milgram’s study was conducted at Yale in USA so it a western/American explanation/response to obedience would other cultures behave like this? More so? Less so?
