Social Influence - Milgram (Obedience) Flashcards
What is obedience
Complying with the demands of an authority figure
Generally, does obedience have a positive or negative influence on people?
Positive as society couldn’t function adequately without rules & laws being obeyed & authority figures being acknowledged as having the right to give orders
Who conducted a study into obedience?
Milgram
Why did Milgram want to conduct his study?
If the Germans have a different personality that led them to blindly obey hitler or whether people are generally more obedient than they would care to believe
What was the aims of Milgram’s study?
To test the ‘Germans are different’ hypothesis (Germans are highly obedient & hitler couldn’t have exterminated the jews without the unquestioning cooperation of them)
To see if individuals would obey the orders of an authority figure that incurred negative consequences & went against one’s moral code
What was the procedure of Milgram’s study?
40 American volunteer males (20-50)
Took place at Yale university
There was a confederate experimenter (lab coat) & Mr Wallace (confederate learner)
Participants always the teacher & Mr Wallace always the learner
Participants were told the experiment was on the effects punishment on learning (punishments were a series of electric shocks 15-450V)
At 150-330V the learner became more distressed & protested, when the teacher was reluctant to continue the study they received verbal prompts from the experimenter & after 330V the learner was heard no more
What was the findings of Milgram’s study?
62.5% of participants gave shocks over 450V
100% of participants gave shocks over 300V
When there was no pre recorded responses only the learner pounding on the walls -> 65% participants gave shocks over 450V
Many participants became severly distressed -> nervous laughing, sweating & some having seizures
What were the conclusions of Milgram’s study?
The ‘German’s are different’ hypothesis is clearly false and showed that ordinary people can be highly obedient to those who are regarded as authority figures and we may have been just as obedient if we had lived in Nazi Germany
What were the ethical issues with Milgram’s study?
Protection from harm -> participants were subjected to extreme stress & 3 had seizures & Perry claimed debriefing of the participants didn’t always occur as Milgram believed it would confound his results
Informed consent -> Mr Wallace was a confederate so they didn’t know the true purpose of the experiment
Deception -> The participants were told that the experiment was concerned with memory & learning & were only told about the electric shocks afterwards
Right to withdraw -> There was no explicit right to withdraw & attempts to withdraw were meant with verbal prods to continue
What was Milgram’s defence about ethical issues?
Protection from harm -> Only 2% had regrets about being involved & 74% said they learned something about themselves & all 40 participants has psychiatric assessments afterwards with none having long lasting effects
Informed consent -> Milgram debriefed the participants
Deception -> Deception was necessary to ensure the participants were going to behave realistically so the findings could be generalised to real life
Right to withdraw -> 35% of participants did withdraw from the experiment
What were the methological criticisms of Milgram’s study?
Internal validity -> Orne & Holland criticised the internal validity & said the participants delivered the shocks because they knew it wasn’t real
External validity -> Milgram’s study is androcentric & only used Americans which isnt generalisable to other cultures & women
Ecological validity -> Hofling et al (did a study with nurses to see if they would follow an unknown doctors orders by administering a lethal dose of an unknown drug -> 21 out of 22 obeyed although 21 said they wouldn’t of done it)
Historical validity -> McCarthyism was a prominent feature of American culture so Americans were very obedient in the 1960s -> doesn’t reflect obedience today
