Social Influence - Milgram's Research Flashcards
What is obedience?
A form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order. The person issuing the order is usually a figure of authority, who has the power to punish when obedient behaviour is not forthcoming.
What was the procedure of Milgram’s original obedience study?
Milgram recruited 40 male participants through newspaper adverts and flyers in the post. The ad said he was looking for participants for a study about memory. Participants were aged between 20 and 50, and their jobs ranged from unskilled to professional. They were offered $4.50 to take part. A confederate (‘Mr. Wallace’) always ended up as the ‘learner’, and the true participant was the ‘teacher’. Another confederate was the ‘experimenter’. Participants were instructed to give the learner an increasingly severe electric shock each time they made a mistake on a learning task. The shocks started at 15 volts (labelled ‘slight shock’) and rose through to 450 volts (‘danger – severe shock’). If the teacher felt unsure about continuing, the experimenter used a sequence of four standard ‘prods’.
What were the findings of Milgram’s obedience study?
No participants stopped below 300 volts, and 65% continued to the highest level of 450 volts. Observations indicated that participants showed signs of extreme tension, such as sweating, trembling, stuttering, and groaning. Three participants had full-blown uncontrollable seizures. Prior to the study, Milgram had asked 14 psychology students to predict the participants’ behaviour. They estimated that no more than 3% of participants would continue to 450 volts. All participants were debriefed, and 84% said they felt glad to have participated.
What is one evaluation point about internal validity in Milgram’s study?
Orne and Holland (1968) argued that participants behaved the way they did because they didn’t really believe the set-up—they guessed it wasn’t real electric shocks. However, research like Sheridan and King’s (1972) study with real shocks given to a puppy found that 54% of male students and 100% of female students delivered what they thought was a fatal shock. This suggests Milgram’s study had genuine effects because participants believed the shocks were real.
What is one evaluation point about external validity in Milgram’s study?
Milgram’s study may lack external validity because it was conducted in a lab. However, the central feature of this situation was the relationship between authority and the participant, which Milgram argued reflected real-life authority relationships. For example, Hofling et al. (1966) found that levels of obedience to unjustified demands by doctors on nurses were very high (21 of 22 obeyed). This suggests the processes of obedience in Milgram’s study can be generalised to other situations.
What is one evaluation point about replication in Milgram’s study?
Le Jeu de la Mort (‘The Game of Death’) is a documentary about reality TV, presented in France in 2010. It includes a replication of Milgram’s study. 80% of the participants delivered the maximum shock of 460 volts to an apparently unconscious man. Their behaviour was almost identical to that of Milgram’s participants—nervous laughter, nail-biting, and other signs of anxiety. This supports Milgram’s conclusions about obedience to authority.
What is another evaluation point for Milgram’s study?
According to social identity theory, the key to obedience lies in group identification. In Milgram’s study, participants identified with the experimenter and the science of the study. When obedience levels fell, this was because participants identified less with the science and more with the learner or their own moral principles.
