SOC 07 - Milgram study of obedience Flashcards
What was the procedure of Milgram’s study?
- 40 american men were recruited via an advert in a newspaper offering $4.00 for an hour of their time
- The experiment took place in Yale University
- Participants were told they were to take part in an experiment looking at the ‘effects of punishment on learning’ -> however it was actually looking at obedience to authority
- A fixed draw was used to allocate the real participant to the role of the ‘teacher’ and the ‘learner’ to the confederate
- The learner was in a seperate room, so could be heard but not seen
- The teacher was instructed to administer an electric shock (which went up by 15 volts each time, to a maximum of 450 volts) when the learner got a question wrong on a word association task
- NO SHOCKS were actually given, but the participants believed they were real
- As the shocks increased, the participant heard the learner grown out in pain, protest and eventually asked to be released. After 300 volts, he made no further sounds (these were all fake recordings)
- An ‘experimenter’ (actually a biology teacher) was overseeinbg the experiment and would give the teacher ‘verbal prods’ (such as the experiment requires you to continue) if they asked to stop
What were the findings of Milgram’s study?
- All participants continued to up to 300 volts
- 12.5% of participants stopped at 300 volts
- 65% of participants continued to the maximum voltage (450 volts)
- 84% of participants were glad they participated
- Despite the high levels of obedience, participants who took part in the study generally displayed signs of nervousness and tension
- Participants were also shown to be sweating, trembling, stuttering, biting their lips, groaning and dug their nails into their hands
- Many were visibly uncomfortable and probably would not have continued without the ‘verbal prods’ from the ‘experimenter’
- At the end of the study, many of the obedient participants heaved sighs of relief or shooks their heads in apparant regret
What conclusion was draw from Milgram’s study?
- Ordinary people are willing to obey an authority figure, to the extent to which they will hurt an innocent person
- Milgram suspected that there were certain factors in the situation which encouraged obedience, so he conducted further research
What is obedience?
A type of social influence when an individual follows a direct order from what they perceive to be an authority figure, who has the power to punish when obedient behaviour is not forthcoming.
What situational variables did Milgram investigate?
- Proximity
- Location
- Uniform
How did Milgram investigate proximity? And what were the findings?
- Proximity 1 (proximity variation) -> when proximity was increased (when the teacher and learner could see the same room), obedience decreased to 40%
- Proximity 2 (remote instructions) -> when the experimenter gave instructions (e.g. the experiment require that you continue) to teacher (participant) over the phone, obedience decreased to 20.5%. participants also frequently pretended to give shocks
- Proximity 3 (touch proximity) -> when the teacher had to force the learner’s hand onto an ‘electroshock plate’ when the learner refused to answer the question, obedience dropped to 30%
How did Milgram investigate location? And what were the findings?
When conducted in a run-down office building rather than the prestigous , obedience decreased to 47.5%
How did Milgram investigate uniform? And what were the findings?
When the experimenter was called away after an inconvenient telephone call at the start of the experiment, and the role of the experimenter was taken over by an ‘ordinary member of public’ in plain clothes (who was a confederate), obedience dropped to 20%
What is the explanation for obedience dropping when proximity was decreased?
- Decreased proximity allows people to psychologically distance themselves from the consequences of their actions
- For example, when the Teacher and Learner were physically seperated (as in the baseline study), the Teacher was less aware of the harm they were causing to another person so they were more obedient
What is the explanation for obedience dropping when location changed?
- The prestigious university environment gave Milgram’s study legitimacy and authority
- Participants were more obedient in this location because they perceived that the Experimenter shared this legitimacy and that obedience was expected
- However, obedience was still quite high in the office block because the participants perceived the ‘scientific’ nature of the procedure
What is the explanation for obedience dropping when uniform changed?
- Uniforms ‘encourage’ obedience because they are widely recognised symbols of legitimate authority
- We accept that someone in a uniform is entitled to expect obedience because their authority is legitimate (i.e. it is granted by society)
- Someone without uniform is less right to expect our obedience
What are the strengths of Milgram’s study?
- Charles Sheridan and Richard King conducted a study using a procedure like Milgram’s. Participants (students) gave real shocks to a puppy in response to orders from an experimenter. Despite the real distress of the animal, 54% of the men and 100% of the women gave what they thought was a fatal shock
- High control over variables and good standardisation
It was set up in a structured, artificial environment and the procedure and instructions given to each participant was the same - Has been replicated in other cultures
What are the limitations of Milgram’s study?
- The participants in Milgram’s study may have been aware the procedure was fake
- Milgram’s procedure may not have been testing what he intended to test
- It is not very cross cultural
How might participants been aware that the Milgram study was fake?
- This is even more likely in his variations because of the extra manipulation of variables, e.g. the variation where the ‘Experimenter’ is replaced by a ‘member of the public’
- Even Milgram recognised that this situation was so contrived that some participants may well have worked out the truth
How might have Milgram’s study not bee testing what it intended?
- He reported that 75% of his participants said they believed the shocks were genuine
- However, Martin Orne and Charles Holland (1968) argued that participants behaved as they did because they didn’t really believe the set-up, so they were ‘play-acting’
- This was confirmed in a research by Gina Perry (2013) involving listening to tapes of Milgram’s participants and reported that only about half of them seemed to believe that the shocks were real
- Two thirds of these participants were disobedient.
