Obedience To Authority Flashcards
Milgram
Experimental method
Experimental design
Sampling method
1963
Quasi Experiment
Releated measures
Volunteer sampling
Milgram procedure
Using a laboratory experiment with repeated measures and volunteer sampling, milgram asked 40 male participants (recruited using a local newspaper advert and paid $4.50) to take part in an experiment on ‘memory and learning’
Greeted by experimenter who was dressed in a white coat (an authority figure who was a confederate of the experiment)
Genuine participants paired with middle-aged man (confederate) who they believed to believed to be another participant. Both assigned role of either teacher or learner
Although they were told allocation of roles was random, genuine always teacher. Teacher watched learner being strapped into electric chair.
Teacher instructed to teach the learner a series of word pairs. If learner made an error, genuine ordered to give an electric shock, starting at 15V and increasing by 15V each time
Maximum shock was 450V, which could be enough to kill a person. Teacher was given a sample shock to convince them procedure was real, and then placed in a separate room so they could hear (but not see) learner.
Learner gave a predetermined set of responses to the test, giving mainly incorrect answers. As the shocks increased the learners response became more dramatic; e.g. when resching 315V he became silent
If the teacher objected to giving the shocks, experimenter responded with series of verbal prompts (e.g. “the experiment requires you to continue, teacher)
Milgram found that many of the participants repeatedly argued with the experimenter but continued to obey.
100% of participants administered shocks of up to 300V to the learner. 65% administered maximum shock of 450V, far beyond what was labelled “danger: severe shock”.
Concluded that people show very strong levels of obedience to an authority figure, even when their orders go against normal moral codes
M Findings
65% of participants obeyed the orders of the authority figures to give the maximum shock of 450V, labelled XXX
100% of participants gave shocks of up to 300V, labelled intense shock
Participants continued to obey the authority figure despite repeatedly arguig with him to stop
M Conclusion
People show very strong levels of obedience to an authority figure, even when their orders go against normal moral codes
Hofling
Experimental method
Experimental design
Sampling method
1966
Field Experiment
Independent groups
Opportunity sampling
H procedure
Nurses working in both public and private hospitals were telephoned by either an unknown dr (dr smith) or an unknown nurse (nurse smith) and asked to give a dangerous dose (20mg) of an unfamiliar drug, astroten, to a patient (mr jones)
This broke hospital rules as nurses needed to gain signed authorisation from a known doctor before giving any drug
H findings
21out of 22 nurses obeyed the order to administer a dangerous dose of the drug given by the unknown doctor
No nurses (0 out of 22) obeyed the order from the unknown nurse
H conclusions
People show very strong levels of obedience, even in everyday settings with high mundane realism
Obedience is only likely to an authority figure, as participants in this experiment only obeyed a doctor not a nurse
H methodological evaluation 1
Strength is that it has high external validity due to its high mundane realism
Which is when the procedure seems like real life
This is because the nurses were ordered to administer a dangerous dose of a drug in their own working environment
Making it verg easy to generalise the findings to an everyday real life situation
H ME 2
A strength is that there is high control over variables meaning the study is high in reliability
This is when the procedure of a study can be easily replicated and consistently produces similar findings
This is because variabkes such as the script used in the phone call and the type of drug and prescription required were all standardised
This means that the study can be easily replicated and therefore, is reliable
