Social influence: key studies (milgram)

Question 1

What was the aim of milgrams study?

Answer 1

-to investigate if American citizens would obey beyond their morals

Question 2

What was the sample of milgrams study?

Answer 2

-40 us male volunteers
-controlled observation
-1 participant (teacher)
-1 confederate (learner)

Question 3

What was the procedure of milgrams study?

Answer 3

-the learner was tested on word pairs
-teacher told to give increasing shocks if they made a mistake 15v-450v
-experimenter gives 4 prods if teacher becomes reluctant (eg:please continue)

Question 4

What did the study find?

Answer 4

-5% participants stopped at 300v
-65% obeyed all the way to 450v
-after debrief 84% said happy to be part of the study

Question 5

What was a strength to this study?

Answer 5

-research was highly controlled (using the same learner and the same voice recordings increases replicability
-study was replicated (temporal validity) by burger 2009 (found similar results)

Question 6

What were some negatives to this study?

Answer 6

-lacks population validity (us males) although milgrams variations showed no gender difference

Question 7

what were some of milgrams variations?

Answer 7

-proximity of authority -when orders were given over the phone obedience dropped to 20.5%
-location -when study was conducted in an office compared to Yale university obedience dropped to 47.5%
-uniform -when experimenter wasn’t wearing a white lab coat obedience dropped to 20%