SOCIAL INFLUENCE - obedience

Question 1

what is obedience?

Answer 1

A form of social influence where an individual follows a direct order. The person issuing the order is usually a figure of authority, who has power ot punish obedience behaviour that is not forthcoming.

Question 2

what did Milgram want to find?

Answer 2

Whether ordinary people would be prepared to obey unjust orders from an authority figure. Wanted to find the answer to the question of why German population has followed the orders of Hitler and sorted millions of Jews in Holocaust.

Question 3

Baseline procedure of Milgram’s research?

Answer 3

• 40 american volunteers
  -each volunteer was intorduced to another ‘Participant’ who was a confederate
• drew lots to see who was teacher and student
• student had to remember a pair of words

AIM - assess obedience in a situation where an authority figure (experimenter) ordered a teacher (participant) to give and increasingly strong shock to student (confederate) whenever the student got the answer wrong.

• shocks given were fake
• ‘experimenter’ had used four standard ‘prods’ to ensure the teacher would continue

P1 - ‘please continue’
P2- ‘the experiment requires that you continue’
P3 - ‘it is absolutely essential that you continue’
P4 - ‘you have no other choice, you must go on’

Question 4

what were the Baseline findings of Milgram’s research?

Answer 4

• all Ps delivered shocks up to 300V
• 12.5% stopped at 300V
• 65% continued to highest level 450 = showed they were fully obedient
  -MG collected qualitative data of observations:
  Ps showed signs of extreme tension eg sweat,tremble,stutter
  Ps had uncontrollable seizures

Question 5

what did the psychology students predict?

Answer 5

No more than 3% of participants would continue to 450 volts.
This shows that findings were unexpected, students underestimated how obedient people can be.

Question 6

What did Milgram conclude?

Answer 6

That German people are not different. Suspected that there were other factors in the situation that encouraged obedience and conducted further studies.

Question 7

STRENGTHS of milgram’s research?

Answer 7

+ Research support - MG study replicated in a french documentary - their behaviour was almost identical to that of MG Ps. Eg there were signs of anxiety, nervous laugher and nail-biting.
This supports milligrams original findings about obedience to authority, and demonstrates that findings were not just due to special circumstances.

+ Sheridan and King (1972) - conducted a study using a procedure like Milgrams: Ps gave shocks to puppies in response to order from experimenter
54% men and 100% women gave shocks
Suggests that effects in Milgrams study were genuine

Question 8

LIMITATIONS of Milgram’s research?

Answer 8

• Low internal validity
  Orne and Holland (1968) - argue that Ps behaved as they did because they didn’t believe in the set up and were just play-acting.
  Gina Perry (2013) confirms that half of the Ps believed that shocks were real by listening to a tape of MG Ps.
  This suggests that Ps may have been responding to DEMAND CHARACTERSITICS.

According to social identity theory - ps only obeyed when they identified with the scientific aims of the research ( ‘the experiments requires you to continue’).
when they were ordered blindly they refused

This suggests that SIT may provide a more valid interpretation .

• ethical issues - Ps thought that allocation of roles was random but it was fixed. They thought shocks were real (milgram debriefed Ps after experiment)
  Some Ps experienced psychological and physical harm.