1.1.2 Social-Milgram

Question 1

What was Milgrams Aim

Answer 1

To find out naïve participants would obey orders from an authority that went against their values; specifically, to see if they would deliver electric shocks to a confederate sufficiently powerful to kill someone.

Question 2

What was Milgrams original sample

Answer 2

40 participants, all men aged 20-50 all Americans. They were recruited through volunteer sampling: Milgram posted newspaper ads and they were paid $4 for turning up to a “study of memory”. Which was a lie.

Question 3

What was Milgrams procedure

Answer 3

1. 40 participants were chosen from volunteers.Fixed draw was conducted to see who would be learner and who would be teacher-Teacher was always real participant (given 45v trial shock) and the confederate was the learner
2. The teacher sat in front of an a electrical shock generator that ranged from 15v(slight shock) to 450v(xxx) and it went up in 15v increments
3. The learner who was getting shocked had pre determined responses
   - Gave wrong answers to every correct one
   - At 300v they pounded the wall and produced no more responses(Teacher told that no answer is wrong answer)
4. Verbal prods were used to encourage participant to be obedient
   - Please continue
   - please go on
   - you must continue
5. It stopped when the participant refused to continue or reached 450v

Question 4

What was Milgrams result

Answer 4

All participants were obedient to 300v.
65% carried on to 450v shock at the end.
Participants showed serious signs of stress
-Shaking
-trembling
-Some even nervously laughed
On completion many obedient participants showed observable signs of relief

Question 5

What was Milgrams conclusion

Answer 5

Ordinary people in the right situation will do immoral acts

People will obey if the figure is perceived to be legitimate authority

Question 6

What was milgrams 3 main variations

Answer 6

Rundown office block (experiment 10)
Telephonic instructions (experiment 7)
Ordinary man gives orders (experiment 13)

Question 7

Explain Milgrams experiment 7 telephonic instructions

Answer 7

Milgram was seeing if distance from authority affects obedience.
Teacher gave instructions at the start then left and delivered prods and everything else over telephone.
obedience went down to 22.5% and some participants lied about shocks.Physical presence of authority is important

Question 8

Explain milgrams experiment 10 Rundown office block (Bridgeport)

Answer 8

Milgram wanted to see if location was important for obedience because he did original in yale
Same procedure except participants that the research was done for a private research firm and it as conducted in a run down office in Bridgeport
Obedience droped to 45.5% Milgram didn’t believe this was significant enough.He thought setting is not as important for obedience as status of authority figure

Question 9

Evaluate Milgrams original study

Answer 9

GENERALISABILITY (good) - Original study has bad generalisability as its only 40 men however milgram did many studies so good generalisability

RELIABILITY (good) - Standardised procedure with the same prods and multiple variations

APPLICATION (Good) - Shows how obedience can be bad like hollocaust

VALlDITY (Bad) - Lack of ecological validity as it was done in a lab

ETHICS (Bad) - Milgram deceived participants and to some extent removed the right to withdraw he also lied about aim saying it was a memory and learning study however an extensive debrief was given