Milgram Flashcards
What area does the study belong to
Social
Principles of the social area?
Believe behaviour is due to the environment and other people🤷🏻♀️
Background of the study
Are Germans different? The horror of ww2. Persecution of the Jews.
Research method?
No IV
Controlled observation
Aim ?
To find out if naive participants would obey orders from an authority figure that went against their moral values
Sample
40 male participants
Self selected sample- newspaper advertisement in New Haven which asked for participants.
Outline of the procedure
• study took place at Yale University
• the 40 participants was given the role of the ‘teacher’ and saw the ‘learner’ strapped into a chair with non-active electrodes attached to their arms. They were given 45 bolts to stimulate genuineness.
• participants then fully debriefed
• the teacher the sat in front of the electric shock generator in an adjacent room. They had to conduct a paired word test on the learner and give him an electric shock of increasing intensity for every wrong answer.
•the machine had 30 switched ranging form 15-450 volts
• the learner was called mr Wallace and was a mild mannered and likeable accountant. He produced a set of predetermined responses. At 300 volts he pounded on the wall and thereafter made no further replies.
• if the teacher turned to the experimenter for advice on whether to respond with a series of standardised prods of “please continue” or “please go on”
• the study finished when either the ‘teacher’ refused to continue or when they reached 450v
What were the results
100% continued to 300v
65% went to the full 450v
26 participants were obedient
14 were disobedient/defiant
Many participants showed signs of extreme stress- sweating, trembling, stuttering, laughing nervously, 4 had full blown seizures
Conclusions ?
Inhumane acts can be done by ordinary people
People will obey others who they consider a legitimate authority figures even if what they are asked to go against their moral beliefs
How does it relate to the study
Research method
+ high control over extraneous variables.
+ a controlled observation actually shows what people do, not what they just say they do I.e. observers actually administered the shock given by the participant
- no IV so theres no cause and effect
- can’t find out why they obeyed. No explanation to the behaviour
Validity
+ high internal validity. Shows accuracy. participants believed they were really shocking the ‘learner’
- lacks ecological validity. The task is artificial therefore lacking in mundane realism. Being asked to give electric shocks to strangers is an unusual task and doesn’t represent everyday life
Reliability
+ standardised procedure. Participants used the same standardised prods for every participant
Sampling bias
- only male participants (aka androcentric). Can’t be generalised to women as there is no date for females obedience
+ milgram was interested in the horrors of ww2 and why the soldiers obeyed. Therefore the sample is representative as the soldiers in the concentration camps would be male.
Ethnocentrism
- study conducted in the US and then applied across the globe. Other cultures may have very different relationships with obedience
