Milgram 1963

Question 1

Give an overview on Milgram’s experiment.

Answer 1

A study into obedience,
-Participants administered electrical shocks to incorrect answers in a word task,
-Learners were paid actors.

Question 2

What area is Milgram placed under?

Answer 2

Social area, under responses to authority

Question 3

When was Milgram’s study?

Answer 3

1963

Question 4

What was the background of Milgram’s study?

Answer 4

Milgram interested in why people obeyed authority in Nazi Germany

Question 5

What was the aim of Milgram’s experiment?

Answer 5

To investigate the tendency of destructive obedience.

Question 6

What is negative obedience?

Answer 6

When you obey an authority figure to do something deemed ‘morally wrong’

Question 7

How was there an element of deception in Milgram’s experiment?

Answer 7

It was advertised as an experiment to test the effects of punishment on memory.
-Participants told there would be no long lasting effects from the shocks.

Question 8

What was the learner in Milgram’s experiment?

Answer 8

A confederate

Question 9

What is a confederate?

Answer 9

Someone who works secretly with experimenters / organisation

Question 10

How was the sample obtained in Milgram’s study?

Answer 10

Volunteer sampling, ads in newspapers. Each participant was paid $4.50 for showing up.

Question 11

Describe Milgram’s sample.

Answer 11

40 male participants, aged between 20-50 from Newhaven in America

Question 12

How was there ethnocentric bias in Milgram’s experiment?

Answer 12

All participants were white males from America.

Question 13

How is Milgram’s experiment considered unethical?

Answer 13

-3 men had seizures.
-Deception, and harm to participant
-Participants unsure whether they could withdraw due to prods used by experimenter.

Question 14

Discuss the ethics of Milgram’s study.

Answer 14

-Unethical because: Deception, unsure of withdrawing, harm to participants, seizures and panic attacks
-Ethical because: Participants were debriefed and followed up to make sure they were okay

Question 15

Where was Milgram’s study?

Answer 15

Yale University

Question 16

How were roles of teacher and learner assigned?

Answer 16

Roles were drawn out of a hat.
They were always rigged, so the participant was always the teacher.

Question 17

Describe the word task used in the experiment.

Answer 17

The teacher (participant) said a set of words, then repeated the first word said with options for what the second word was. The learner had to choose the correct word. If not they would get shocked.

Question 18

How was the generator believed to be real by the participant?

Answer 18

The participant themselves were administered a fake shock of 45V. This convinced them the generator was real and that the learner was truly feeling the shock.

Question 19

What increments did the shocks go in?

Answer 19

up 15v each time

Question 20

What were the quantitative results from Milgram’s experiment?

Answer 20

100% of participants shocked to 300V, 65% shocked to a lethal voltage (450V)

Question 21

What happened when teachers were defiant in Milgram’s experiment?

Answer 21

The experimenter would use prods
1 = ‘Please continue’,
2 = ‘The experiment requires you continue’
3 = ‘It is absolutely essential that you continue’
4 = ‘You have no other choice, you must go on’

Question 22

How was there a lack of generalisability in Milgram’s study of obedience?

Answer 22

All men of similar ages, all from Newhaven, America.

Question 23

Why do people argue that Milgram’s obedience study wasn’t even an experiment?

Answer 23

There was no independent variable.

Question 24

What happened a year after Milgram’s experiment?

Answer 24

There was a psychological checkup to make sure there wasn’t significant psychological harm to participants.

Question 25

How many participants exercised their free-will in Milgram's experiment? (Percentage)

Answer 25

35% of participants exercised their free-will.

Question 26

How did Milgram justify his experiment?

Answer 26

Milgram justifies this experiment due to the usefulness + participants consented.

Question 27

How has Milgram's study impacted society?

Answer 27

-People are no longer to plead obedience as an excuse, we are encouraged to question authority. -Attitudes regarding war causes have now been changed.

Question 28

Milgram's conclusion about his experiment

Answer 28

"If an anonymous experimenter could command adults to subdue a 51 year old man and shock him we can only wonder what the government can command of its subjects."

Question 29

What is an Agentic State?

Answer 29

You're an agent of someone else's orders (participants of Milgram's study felt able to continue knowing it wasn't their problem if someone was hurt).

Question 30

In Milgram's experiment, what did the learner do as the voltage increased to create tension?

Answer 30

-300V the learner started to kick the wall and beg for it to end. -Eventually at 350V the learner would not reply at all to any questions or the shocks.

Question 31

Discuss the reliability of Milgram's study

Answer 31

Considered replicable, it can be replicated and results are consistent, standardised procedure.

Question 32

Discuss the validity of Milgram's study

Answer 32

-Lacked ecological validity as it was a laboratory experiment -High levels of internal validity as it was carried out in a laboratory -Lacks population validity and external validity

Question 33

Discuss sample bias of Milgram's study

Answer 33

Participants white 20-50 year old men, all from America. This may cause a lack of generalisability of results. However, Milgram repeated his experiment with other people, for example with women, where the results were the same.

Question 34

How does the key debate free-will/determinism link to Milgram's study?

Answer 34

Do we have free-will not to obey authority figures? or are we determined to?

Question 35

What is Milgram's agency theory?

Answer 35

People have two states when in a social situation, one is autonomous where people take control of their actions, and another is the agentic state where people are obeying others

Question 36

According to Milgram, what two things must happen for someone to get into an agentic state?

Answer 36

1: The person giving the orders is perceived as legitimate. 2: The person being ordered believes that the authority will accept responsibility for what happens.

Question 37

What are three conclusions to Milgram's study?

Answer 37

1) People appear to be more obedient to authority figures than we might expect. 2) When people are given orders to act destructively they will experience high levels of stress and anxiety. 3) People are willing to harm someone if responsibility is taken away and passed on to someone else.

Question 38

How does the key debate situational/individual link to Milgram's study?

Answer 38

The individual explanation attributes obedience to personal traits, while the situational explanation more realistically recognizes that environmental factors strongly influenced participants’ behaviour.

Question 39

What are some situational factors that could have affected obedience in Milgram's study?

Answer 39

-Yale was an institutional authority -Experimenter wore authoritative uniform -There was a physical separation from learner -Experimenter being in room divided responsibility -Gradual nature of the task -Rapid, so there was no time to reflect -There was a contractual obligation