Situational variables affecting obedience - Milgram

Question 1

describe the participants in Milgram’s study

Answer 1

randomly selected participants - 40 male volunteers

Question 2

what was the aim of Milgram’s study?

Answer 2

to observe whether people would obey a figure of authority when told to harm another person

Question 3

what were the roles in Milgram’s study and how were they decided?

Answer 3

• participant = ‘teacher’
• confederate = ‘learner’
• decided through random allocation

Question 4

what did each role have to do?

Answer 4

• participant had to ask the confederate a series of questions
• whenever the confederate got the answer wrong, the participant had to give him an electric shock, even when no answer was given

Question 5

what were the incriments of the electric shocks & did the ppt think they were real?

Answer 5

electric shocks incremented by 15 volts at a time, ranging from 300V to 450V, where 330V was marked as ‘lethal’
participants thought the shocks were real when in fact there were no real shocks administered, and the confederate was acting

Question 6

what was the role of the experimenter?

Answer 6

to give a series of orders / prods when the participant refused to administer a shock, which increased in terms of demandingness for every time the participant refused to
administer a shock

Question 7

what were the participants assesed on?

Answer 7

how many volts they were willing to shock the confederate with

Question 8

what voltage did all ppts go up to?

Answer 8

300V

Question 9

how many went up to 450V?

Answer 9

65%

Question 10

how many stopped at 300V?

Answer 10

12.5%

Question 11

how did proximity affect Milgram’s study?

Answer 11

• participants obeyed more when the experimenter was in the same room eg. 62.5%
• reduced to 40% when the experimenter and participant were in separate rooms
• reduced to a further 30% in the touch proximity condition eg. where the experimenter
  forcibly placed the participant’s hand on the electric plate

Question 12

how did location affect Milgram’s study?

Answer 12

• participants obeyed more when the study was conducted at a prestigious university eg. Stanford
• the prestige of such a location demands obedience and also may increase the trust that the
  participant places in the integrity of the researchers and their experiments

Question 13

how did uniform affect Milgram’s study?

Answer 13

• participants obeyed more when the experimenter wore a lab coat
• uniform gives them a higher status and a greater sense of legitimacy
• obedience was much higher when the experimenter wore a lab coat as opposed to normal clothes
• however, demand characteristics were particularly evident in this condition, with even Milgram admitting that many participants could see through this deception

Question 14

what is a limitation of Milgram’s study? (PEE)
- lacks ecological validity

Answer 14

eg. Milgram conducted a laboratory study which is different to real-life situations of obedience. IRL we obey more subtle instructions as opposed to electric shocks
TMB methodology lacks mundane realism + cant be generalised to real life

Question 15

what is a limitation of Milgram’s study? (PEE)
- ethical issues

Answer 15

eg. there was deception and so informed consent could not be
obtained. This deception was justified by the aim of avoiding
demand characteristics + didnt protect them from harm, some ppts looked visibly distressed , Such findings were also
replicated in the Jeu de la Mort study, showing that these results were not due to participant differences
TMB he didn’t respect his ppts who may ahve felt anxious or guilty

Question 16

what is a strength of Milgram’s study? (PEE)
- highly replicable

Answer 16

repeated all over world + consistent and similar obedience levels have been found.
eg. , in a replication of Milgram’s study using the TV pseudonym of Le Jeu de la Mort, researchers found that 85% of
ppts were willing to give lethal electric shocks to an unconscious man (confederate), whilst being cheered on by a
presenter and a TV audience
TMB increases reliability

Question 17

what is a strength of Milgram’s study? (PEE)
- real world applications

Answer 17

research opened our eyes to the
problem of obedience and so may reduce future obedience in
response to destructive authority figures
e.g. obedience has resulted in negative social change - the Nazis obeyed orders and as
a result, Hitler managed to get what he wanted ( not what majority wanted)
TMB A general awareness of the power of such influences is useful in establishing social order and moral behaviours.