Situational Variables Affecting Obedience Flashcards
Who did the key study?
Milgram (1963)
What was Milgrams study?
Involved 40 participants at a time over a series of conditions, each varying some aspect of the situation to calculate its effect on obedience.
Had to increase the volts every time got an answer wrong
What were participants told?
It was a study of how punishment affects learning.
How many confederates were in Milgrams study?
Two - an experimenter, and a 47 year old man who was introduced as another volunteer participant.
What was the procedure of Milgrams study?
The two participants drew lots to see who would act as the ‘teacher’ and who the ‘learner’. This was rigged so that the real participants was always the teacher and the ‘fake’ participant the learner.
The teacher was required to test the learner on his ability to remember word pairs.
Every time he got one wrong the teacher had to administer increasingly strong electric shocks, starting at 15 volts, and then continuing up to the maximum of 450 volts in 15 volt increments.
In the voice feedback study, the learner, sitting in another room, gave mainly wrong answers and received his (fake) shocks in silence until they reached the 300 volts level (very strong shocks).
At this point he pounded on the wall and then gave no response to the next question.
He repeated this at 315 volts and from then on said/did nothing.
If the ‘teacher’ asked to stop at any point, the experimenter had a series of ‘prods’ to repeat, such as saying, ‘it is absolutely essential that you continue’ or ‘you have no other choice, you must go on’.
What were Milgrams findings?
Before the study, milgram asked psychiatrists, college students and colleagues to predict how long participants would go before refusing to continue.
Consistently these groups predicted that very few would go beyond 150 volts and only 1 in 1,000 would administer the full 450 volts.
However, contrary to these expectations in the voice feedback study, 26 of the 40 participants (65%) continued to the maximum shock level, 450 volts.
This was despite the shock generator being labelled ‘Danger: severe shock’ at 420 volts and ‘XXX’ at 450.
In fact, all participants went to 300 volts with only 5 (12.5%) stopping there, the point at which the learner first objected.
What are the factors that can affect obedience?
Proximity
Location
The power of uniform
How did proximity affect obedience?
Both teacher and learner were seated in the same room.
Obedience levels fell to 40% as the teacher was now able to experience the learners anguish more directly.
In an even more extreme variation the teacher was required to force the learners hand onto a shock plate.
In this touch proximity condition, the obedience rate dropped even further to 30%.
Proximity of authority figure - experimenter absent after giving instructions, and gave subsequent orders of the phone.
Only 21% continued to the maximum shock level
Some even said they were giving the maximum shock level but they were giving the weakest repeatedly.
How did location affect obedience?
The studies were conducted in the psychology laboratory at Yale university.
Several participants remarked that the location of the study gave then confidence in the intergrity of the people involved, and many indicated they would not have shocked the learner if this study had been carried out elsewhere.
Milgram moved his study to a run-down office in Bridgeport, Connecticut, with no obvious affiliations to Yale.
Obedience rates did drop slightly but not significantly, with 48% of participants delivering the 450volt maximum shock.
How did the power of uniform affect conformity?
They are easily recognisable and convey power and authority, which can become symbolised in the uniform itself.
Bushman (1988) carried out a study where a female researcher, dressed in either a ‘police-style’ uniform, as a business executive or as a beggar, stopped people in the street and told them to give change to a male researcher for an expired parking meter.
When she was in the uniform, 72% of the people obeyed.
As a business executive 48% obeyed.
As a beggar 52% obeyed.
When interviewed afterwards, people claimed they had obeyed the woman in uniform because she appeared to have authority.
What are the evaluative points?
Ethical issues
Interval validity: a lack of realism
Individual differences: influence of gender
External validity: the obedience alibi
Historical validity: would the same thing happen today
What is meant by lack of realism?
Orne and Holland (1968) claimed that participants have learned to distrust experimenters as the real purpose of a study is often disguised.
Perry (2012) discovered that many of Milgram’s participants were skeptical about whether the shocks were real. Those who believed the shocks were real were less likely to obey the experimenter.
This challenges the validity of Milgram’s study, suggesting that in real life people would be more likely to disobey a destructive authority figure.
What is meant by historical validity?
This study might be dismissed as having no relevance to modern life because it was carried out over 50 years ago.
However, Blass (1999), in an analysis of obedience studies carried out between 1961 and 1985, found no relationship between the year of publication and levels of obedience.
This suggests that Milgram’s studies are still relevant today as they were in the 1960s, i.e. they have historical validity.
What is meant by increasing proximity doesn’t always lead to decreased obedience?
Mandel (1998) claims that Milgram’s findings about the influence of proximity on obedience are not borne out by real-life events.
A study of reserve police battalion 101 found that close physical proximity to their Jewish victims didn’t make these men less obedient.
Mandel concludes that using ‘obedience’ as an explanation for these atrocities masks the real reasons behind such behaviours.
