SI: 2, Obedience Flashcards
What is the AIM of Milgram’s Obedience Experiment?
To investigate if people will obey orders even if requiring the harm of others
What is the PROCEDURE of Milgram’s Obedience Experiment?
- 40 american males recruited through newspaper ad
- participants were told the study was on how punishment affects learning
- experimenter assigned participants to role of teacher through a rigged draw whilst another confederate was given the role of learner
- the learner had to answer word-pairing questions, if they gave an incorrect answer the teacher was told to administer a shock which increased from 15 to 450 volts
- 4 prods were used to encourage the participnts to continue, if they protested after this they could withdraw
What are the FINDINGS of Milgram’s Obedience Experiment?
- 65% went to max voltage
- 100% reached 300 volts
- many showed signs of anxiety, sweating, shaking, nervous laughter
What was the CONCLUSION of Milgram’s Obedience Experiment?
people will obey orders from a perceived authority figure, potentially fatally harming a stranger in doing so
Evaluate Milgram’s Obedience Experiment
❌ could be argued that participants did not believe the shocks were real & acted -> Gina Perry (2013) listened to tapes of Milgram’s participants, reported only around half believed the shocks were real & 2/3 were disobedient -> suggests they were responding to demand characteristics -> low internal validity
↳ ✅ However, quantitative data gathered by Milgram directly suggested that 70% of participants believed that the shocks were real
✅ Research Support -> Sheridan & King (1972) conducted a study with a similar procedure to Milgram’s with real shocks administered to a puppy, found similar results with 54% of males 100% of females delivering what they thought was a fatal shock despite the puppy’s distress, suggests Milgram’s participants would have acted the same way if the shocks were real : validity
❌ Ethics -> deception & lack of protection from harm -> didn’t know the learner was a confederate or that the shocks were fake, could not give fully informed consent & participants showed signs of emotional distress with nervous laughter, shaking, nail-biting… but were not protected -> could have caused long-term harm -> unethical
↳ ✅ However, Milgram debriefed participants after and found that 84% were glad to have taken part
❌ **Gender bias** -> androcentric beta bias as all participants were male -> findings are unrepresentative & ungeneralisable to a wider population because women may have different responses to men in terms of obedience, e.g in Sheridan & King's study, 100% of women were willing to administer a fatal shock to a puppy but only 54% of males -> findings lack external validity
What are the 3 situational explanations for obedience?
- Agentic State
- Legitimacy of Authority
- Situational Factors
Outline the agentic state
- an explanation offered by Milgram where an individual carries out the orders of a perceived authority figure after the agentic shift from the autonomous state to the agentic state
- they absolve responsibility for their actions with the presence of binding factors which justify their actions, e.g in Milgram’s study, the learners gave consent so it’s okay to issue electric shocks upon them
Evaluate the Agentic State
❌ Cannot explain why some people did not obey in Milgram’s study as they should all have been in agentic state -> cannot explain all obedience or obedience over long periods of time e.g nazi germany ->
lacks expanatory power
✅ Research Support -> Blass & Schmitt (2001) asked oberservers to explain who they thought was responsible for the harm caused to the learner in Milgram’s study, most thought the experimenter was responsible which supports the agentic state
Outline legitimacy of authority
- suggests people will obey someone they perceive to be “above” them in social hierarchy
- they think they have the right to give orders
- uniform conveys a sense of legitimacy of authority which is “rightful” as it is agreed by society that it’s necessary to be able to tell others what to do in some situations
Evaluate legitimacy of authority
✅ Support by cultural differences -> in countries where obedience to authority is less valued, e.g australia, obedience rates are much lower than in countries that value legitimate authority figures, e.g germany, suggests legitimacy of authority does play a part in obedience
Outline the authoritarian personality
- created by adorno who interviewed former nazi soliders at the end of wwii and developed the f-scale which measured how authoritarian/facsist a person is
- in his study of american participants he found a high f-scale scpre was linked with excessive respect to those of higher status
- features of this personality include:
- negative view toward those they perceive as below them
- rigid in their opinions
- belief in traditional values
- unwilling to accept new ideas/situations
- people with this personality are more likely to have had a strict upbringing which gives them respect for authority but also creates resentment of their parents on an unconscious level, displaced onto those they perceive as below them
Evaluate the authoritarian personality
✅ Milgram & Elms (1966) -> found link between Milgram’s obedience participants & high f-scale score, suggesting an authoritarian personality is associated with obedience
↳ ❌ Link = Correlational -> cannot be concluded that personality type causes obedience, rather they are just related -> weakens explanation
❌ Hard to Apply to large groups or whole populations like nazi germany as not everybody will have had an authoritarian personality
Outline PROXIMITY as a situational factor in obedience
- Milgram varied his experiment so that the learner & teacher were in the same room, obedience dropped to 40% because the teacher could see the consequences of their actions
- when orders were given over the phone. obedience dropped to 20.5% as teacher did not feel pressure to obey, some even lied and claimed to have given stronger shocks than they did
Outline LOCATION as a situational factor in obedience
- experiment was moved from prestigious Yale University to run-down office and obedience fell to 47.5% because the lack of prestige of the location made it seem less important to obey
Outline UNIFORM as a situational factor in obedience
- when experimenter was replaced with a “member of the public” (another confederate wearing ordinary clothing rather than a lab coat), obedience dropped to 20% because participants did not see the authoirty figure as legitimate
