Situational factors affecting obedience

Question 1

What were the situational factors in Milgram’s study?

Answer 1

Proximity, location and uniform

Question 2

What happened in proximity variation?

Answer 2

Teacher and learner moved to same room, obedience dropped from 65% to 40%
In touch proximity variation, teacher had to force learner’s hand onto shock plate, obedience rate dropped to 30%
When experimenter left room and gave instructions via telephone, obedience dropped to 20.5%

Question 3

What happened in location variation?

Answer 3

Milgram conducted variation in run down office block
Obedience rate dropped to 47.5%

Question 4

What happened in uniform variation?

Answer 4

Experimenter called away and replaced by ‘ordinary member of the public’, not wearing lab coat
Obedience rate dropped to 20%
Lowest of all variations

Question 5

Research support?

Answer 5

Bickman (1974)- 3 confederates, one wore jacket and tie, one in milkman uniform, and one in security guard uniform
Confederates stood on street and asked passers by to perform certain tasks, such as picking up litter
Found that people twice as likely to obey security guard as other two

Question 6

Cross cultural replications?

Answer 6

Meeus and raajimakers (1968) studied obedience in Dutch pots instructed to say stressful things to confederate in an interview who was desperate for a job, 90% obeyed
However, Smith and Bond (1998) showed that replication of Milgram’s research were not very multi cultural

Question 7

Internal validity?

Answer 7

Ppts may have known it was a fake situation, especially in uniform variation
Ppts may have attempted to please the experimenter by doing what’s expected of them
Lowers internal validity