Situational factors affecting obedience

Question 1

What are Milgram’s 3 situational variable factors

Answer 1

Proximity
Location
Uniform

Question 2

How did proximity affect obedience

Answer 2

Same room - 65% to 40%
Touch proximity - Learners hand is forced onto shock plate. Obedience dropped to 30%
Remote instruction condition - Researcher gave teacher instructions via phone - Obedience dropped to 20.5%

Question 3

How did location affect obedience

Answer 3

Obedience of people who went to 450v fell to 47.5% when conducted in a basement

Question 4

How did uniform affect obedience

Answer 4

Obedience of people who went to 450v dropped to 20% when the experimenter was replaced by a confederate in ordinary clothes

Question 5

A03’s for situational explanation for obedience

Answer 5

Nazi obedience alibi - Mendel - Can provide an alibi for violence e.g. genocide
Mirandas research on Spanish students - 90% obeyed making Milgram’s research reliable(Counter - Smith and Bond suggest that obedience differs depending on culture
Evidence to support - Bickman’s field experiment(New York) on uniform using a suit, security guard uniform and milkman uniform. People were twice as likely to obey security guard than the others(Counter - Obedience differs depending on culture)

Question 6

Issues and debates for situational explanations of obedience

Answer 6

Nomothetic vs ideographic

Generalises results of situational variables experiment to everyone/ignores personal differences