Social Influence - Obedience Flashcards
AO1
- Experiment in yale university
- 500 participants
- 40 In original
- Obedience
- Learners and Teachers – seemed randomly assigned but wasn’t random. Were always Teacher
- Teachers were asked to match pairs, if the learner got it wrong, the teacher would electric shock them
- Told it was a memory test
- 300V – 100%
- 450V – 65%
- Pressured to do the behaviour – prodded
- Expected 1% to go up to 450V
AO3
- One strength of Milgram’s findings is that there is research to support it
- For example, in a French documentary the participants were paid to give electric shocks to audience members who were actually actors, similar to Milgram’s research, and 80% of the participants delivered the maximum shock of 460 volts to an apparently conscious man.
- This validates Milgram’s findings as the behaviour was almost identical to that of Milgram’s participants showing that his research is reliable
- However, it can be argued that due to the setting being a tv show, the participants could have acted in accord to pleasing the viewers of the show or just to please the show, which suggests their behaviour could’ve been affected by the setting being different, which reduces the usefulness of research to support it
- Despite this, it supports Milgram’s original findings about obedience to authority, and demonstrates that the findings were not just due to special circumstances.
- Thus, increasing the validity of the Milgram’s findings for Obedience
- A weakness of Milgram’s procedure is that it has low internal validity
- For example, Gina Perry listened to the tapes of Milgram’s participants and reported that only half of them believed the shocks were real with two-thirds of these participants being disobedient
- This is a weakness as it shows that they behaved as they did because they didn’t believe
- However, it can be argued that a majority, 75% of the participants said they believed the shocks were genuine, so their response and behaviour were not biased and were genuine, thus validating their research
- Despite this, the participants may have been responding to demand characteristics, trying to fulfil the aims of the study
- Thus decreasing the validity of Milgram’s research for Obedience
- A weakness of Milgram’s study is that it cannot be generalised
- For example, in his research, Milgram used only 40 American males
- This is a weakness because it only applied to the male gender. Additionally, they were all males from America so it cannot necessarily be generalised to all males around the world considering the cultural differences.
- However, it can be argued that Milgram also did the experiment with females years later and found that the percentage for both males and females was 65% for shocking 450 volts to the learner, showing that it has credibility
- Despite this, his initial research only applied to a specific group of people, not everyone
- Thus decreasing he validity of Milgram’s experiment for Obedience
milgram original 1963 study into obedience aims
- Milgram (1963) was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it
involved harming another person. - His research aimed to test the belief, following the Nazi atrocities, that ‘German’s are different’. He
believed that in the right circumstances anyone is capable of performing an evil act
milgram original 1963 study into obedience procedure
- Volunteers were recruited for a study investigating the effects of punishment on
learning. Participants were 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, from a range of occupations. - At the beginning of the experiment they were introduced to another participant, who was actually a
confederate of the experimenter. They drew straws to determine their roles – learner or teacher –
although this was fixed so that the confederate was always the learner. - The “learner” (Mr. Wallace) is then taken to an adjoining room and strapped to a chair and attached
to electrodes so that he could receive shock from an electricity generator. After he has been read a
list of word pairs, the “teacher” tests him by naming a word and asking the learner to recall its
partner/pair from a list of four possible choices. - The teacher is told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake, increasing
the level of shock each time. There were 30 switches on the shock generator marked from 15 volts
(slight shock) to 450 (danger – severe shock). Unbeknown to the participant, no actual shocks are
received by the confederate and his protests are from a taped pre-recording. - The learner gave mainly wrong answers (on purpose) and for each of these the teacher gave him an
electric shock. When the teacher refused to administer a shock the experimenter was to give a
series of orders / prods to ensure they continued.
milgram original 1963 study into obedience results
- All 40 of the participants in the original study obeyed up to 300 volts
- Overall, 65% of the participants gave shocks up to 450 volts (obeyed) and 35% stopped sometime
before 450 volts. - During the study many participants showed signs of nervousness and tension including trembling,
stuttering, digging fingernails into their flesh, indicating that although they were obeying, they were
not enjoying what they were doing. Three of the participants experienced seizures.
milgram original 1963 study into obedience conclusion
- Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing
an innocent human being. Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought
up.
evaluation of milgram original 1963 study into obedience
Evaluation point 1
P: The research is high in reliability.
E: The laboratory based experiment has been replicated
many times and the high levels of obedience have been
shown with other populations, across genders, in different
eras and in different situations.
E: In one study by Hofling et al, (1966) 21 out of 22
nurses broke hospital rules by preparing to administer
twice the maximum dosage of a drug to a patient after
receiving a phone call from an unknown doctor
L: This shows that the findings of the original research
can be trusted and can be generalised to a wide range of
situations, and populations, allowing us to make valid
conclusions and predictions about obedience behaviour.
Evaluation point 2
The research could be considered socially sensitive. This is
because Milgram and his supporters have used this research
to explain the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the 1930s
and 1940s. Critics of this stance argue that this simplifies the
holocaust to a “I was just following orders” defence, one
notable example being Adolph Eichmann, Hitler’s right-hand
man and the architect of the final solution, who attempted to
use this as a defence at his trial in Nuremberg. However, in
reality, many Nazis supported the final solution, believing it
was the right course of action to take. This raises concerns
that it removes the responsibility from many of the Nazis and
their followers for their part in the atrocities (Mandel, 1998)
and ignores other psychological mechanisms that played a
part in their behaviour.
Evaluation point 3
Milgram’s study has been criticised for being highly unethical.
As well as being deceived about the nature of the study and
being pressured to continue when they wanted to quit,
participants experienced a great deal of stress as a result of going
through the procedure, which some believe is not acceptable,
and would not be allowed by the current ethical guidelines.
Coupled with these concerns, some critics of Milgram have
argued that the artificiality of the experimental situation meant
that the situation would not have seemed real to the participants
and therefore they would not have been displaying true
behaviour. Some have argued that they were simply role playing
their anxiety to fit in with the researcher’s expectations. If this is the case, then the poor treatment of the
participants can less easily be justified in a cost benefit analysis
