Social Influence: Lesson 5 - Obedience to Authority

Question 1

What is obedience?

Answer 1

Behaving as instructed by an authority figure

Question 2

What is an authority figure?

Answer 2

Someone who has status or power over others

Question 3

What is the Milgram experiment? (Procedure of introduction and assigning roles)

Answer 3

• milgram placed an advertisement asking male participants to take part in a study about the effect of punishment on learning
• 40 students were invited to the psychology department of Yale uni
• they were met by the experimenter (a man in a white lab coat) who was a confederate
• met by a 47 yr old man who they were told was another participant named Mr Wallace (was actually a confederate)
• picked notes to determine who would be teacher and who would be learner, but it was made sure that Mr Wallace was always the leaner

Question 4

What is the Milgram experiment? (Procedure of experiment)

Answer 4

• participant told that his role was to punish learner if they made a mistake on a memory test by administrating an electric shock, increasing the voltage with each mistake
• teacher was placed in adjoining room to learner
• learner was hooked up to the shock machine and teacher was placed in the room with he controls (which were fake but convincing)
• teacher pressed switches with labelled voltages to administer shock (voltage started and 15 and rose in increments of 15 up to 450
• each group of 4 switches was labelled additionally with text such as ‘slight shock’, ‘moderate shock’, all the way up to ‘danger: severe shock’. Final few switches were marked with XXX
• as shocks became more severe Mr Wallace demanded to be released from experiment screamed, kicked the wall, comp,amend about his weak heart, refused to answer and finally went silent
• experimenter would ensure the teacher to continue by using the four statements ‘please continue’, ‘the experiment requires you to continue’, ‘it is absolutely essential that you continue’ and ‘you have no choice, you must continue’

Question 5

What were the Milgram experiment findings?

Answer 5

• 100% of participants gave shocks up to 300 volts
• 65% of participants gave electric shocks all the way up to 450 volts
• participants showed spoof high stress, including sweating, trembling, and in some cases, anxious and hysterical laughter
• despite this most were obedient and seemed willing to inflict potentially lethal shocks in a man with a weak heart

Question 6

Evaluation of Milgram 1 (informed consent) (-)

Answer 6

• participants were deceived about the true nature of the experiment as they were told that it was really about memory when it was about obedience
• this means that they did not give informed consent to take part
• they were also told that Mr Wallace was a participant with a weak heart
  (However this deception was all necessary to avoid demand characteristics, which increases the validity of the study)

Question 7

Evaluation of Milgram 2 (psychological harm) (-)

Answer 7

• participants became extremely distressed (some even hysterical) and some even thought they had killed Mr Wallace
• however Milgram did not expect his participants toobey so this psychological harm could not have been anticipated

Question 8

Evaluation of Milgram 3 (right to withdraw) (-)

Answer 8

• several participants asked to leave the experiment but they were told they were not allowed
• this violates their right to withdraw

Question 9

Evaluation of Milgram 4 (cost-benefit analysis) (+)

Answer 9

+ many psychologists feel that after doing a cost-benefit analysis (weighing the harm from the study against the valuable knowledge it provided) the was worthwhile
+ we now know that most people could do the same thing, leading people to take more responsibility and not blindly follow others
+ The participants did not suffer any true long-term emotional disturbances and 84% said they were happy to have taken part and they learnt something important from the experience

Question 10

Evaluation of Milgram 5 (unrepresentative) (-)

Answer 10

-the sample is unrepresentative as all of the participants were white American males
-therefore the results cannot be generalised to women and other cultures, meaning that there is gender bias and cultural bias
(However the study was replicated with women and the obedience rate was not significantly different)