Outline and evaluate research into obedience Flashcards
outline milgram
Using a laboratory experiment with volunteer sampling and repeated measures, Milgram informed 40 male participants (recruited using a newspaper ad and paid $4.50) that they were taking part in a study concerning memory and learning.
They were greeted by an experimenter wearing a white lab coat (an authority figure who was a confederate of the experiment).
Genuine participants were paired with a middle-aged man (confederate) and then randomly assigned to the role of either teacher or learner. Although they were told the allocation of roles was random, the genuine participant was always assigned to the role of teacher.
The teacher then watched the learner being strapped into an electric chair. The teacher was instructed to teach the learner a series of word pairs.
If the learner made a word error, the teacher was ordered to administer an electric shock, starting at 15v and increasing by 15v each time. The maximum shock was 450v, which could be enough to kill a person.
The teacher was given a sample shock to convince them the procedure was real, and then placed in a separate room so they could hear but not see them.
The learner gave a set of predetermined responses to the test, most of which were incorrect. As the shocks increased, the learner’s response became more dramatic; at 315v, the learner became silent.
If the teacher objected to the shock, the experimenter gave a verbal prompt e.g. “the experiment requires you to continue”. Milgram found that many of the participants argued with the experimenter but continued to obey.
100% of the participants shocked the learner up to 315v and 65% administered the maximum shock of 450v, far beyond what was labelled as ‘danger: severe shock’.
He concluded that people have very strong levels of obedience to authority figures, even when their instructions go against normal moral codes.
limit milgram
A limitation of Milgram’s study is that it has low internal validity, meaning, it may not have accurately measured what it intended to measure.
This is because critics such as Orne and Holland (1968) argued that participants may have guessed that the shocks were fake. Perry’s (2013) research supports this.
This means that the study may not have measured obedience as it would have meant that participants found it easier to obey instructions, knowing that there were no consequences for their actions.
However, interviews after the study found that 70% of participants believed that the shocks were real. Sherridan and Kings (1972) research supports this as it showed similar behaviour when the shocks were genuine.
milgram strength
A strength of Milgram’s study is that he argued that the artificial relationship between experimenter and teacher is no different to obedience in wider settings.
This is because the procedure simply involved a participant of lower status following instructions from an authority figure.
Hofling and Bickman found that, in their own field experiments, participants were highly likely to obey simply because someone was perceived to have legitimate authority, e.g., nurses following the instructions of a doctor who they thought was real.
Therefore, although the experiment may have been artificial, the process it used to study obedience can be generalised to different settings.
outline hofling
using a field experiment with opportunity sampling and independent groups, Hofling posed as Dr Smith and telephoned 22 nurses at either a public or private hospital.
He ordered the nurses, over the phone, to administer 20mg of a drug ‘Astrofen’, a dose that was double the recommended dose on the packet.
The drug was not a real drug, and the nurses were stopped from administering the drug by a confederate. He had the permission of the hospital to do the experiment.
It was a test of obedience as nurses are not meant to follow instructions over the phone and they are meant to question any doctor who recommends an unusual dose.
21 out of 22 nurses obeyed the doctor’s instructions over the phone. He concluded that people have very strong levels of obedience to authority in real life, natural conditions.
hofling strength
A strength of Hofling and Bickman is that it has high external validity due to its high mundane realism.
This is when the study 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 easy to generalise to an everyday situation in real life.
hofling strength 2
Another strength is that it has high levels of control over variables meaning its high in reliability.
This is when the procedure of a study can be easily replicated and consistently produces similar findings.
This is because the study used a script in the phone call and the type of drug and prescription was standardised meaning, the study can be easily replicated and is reliable.
