Milgram (1963) Mandatory Flashcards
Aim
To investigate how far people will go in obeying an authority figure. He was Interested in the question of why so many ordinary German people had followed instructions in the 1930-40s.
Procedure
Forty male participants volunteered and were told that the aim was to find out the effect of punishment on learning. At the start the participants were introduced to Mr Wallace (confederate) and then a learner and teacher was picked ‘randomly’ with with the participant always being the teacher. The teacher was shown the room with the electric shock machine that they were told Mr Wallace would be strapped to and were even given a shock to see if it was real. The participant was then taken to a separate room and instructed to ask Mr Wallace questions that if he answered wrong he would shock him, increasing the shock by 15V each time. Mr Wallace was never actually shocked, a recording was played of him shouting in pain, speaking of a heart problem and eventually going silent to make the teacher wonder if he had died). Many of the teachers wanted to stop but there was a prompter in a lab coat in the room telling them that it was essential they continued.
Results
65% of the participants went on obeying instructions and giving shocks right up to and including 450V which always labelled severely dangerous. Every single participant went up to 300V and everyone who went to 375V continues to 450V.
Conclusion
Large numbers of people were prepared to continue instruction even when for all the know another human being was in extreme pain or even dying as a result. They chose to do this rather then challange the experiment and rip out of the experiment.
Evaluation: Stengths
(3)
An implication of the results is that it was a ground breaking and influential study which was highly controlled in a laboratory situation. To investigate cultural differences there have been replications in other countries.
The fact that it was a lab experiment meant that extraneous variables could be controlled making the results more valid.
The experiment was repeated a number of times with different conditions and so is reliable.
Applications
(2)
An application of this study is that people obey others they perceive to have authority over them. The experimenter is seen as having legitimate authority as he is a scientist.
A real life application of this study is that it links to World War Two and may help to explain the behaviour of soldiers.
Evaluation: weaknesses
(4)
This study had many ethical breaches - deception, distress, failure to protect participants from emotional harm, and the lack of the right to withdraw effects this studies ability to be taken seriously.
The experiment lacked mundane realism, the experiment is not something that would happen in everyday life and so the results aren’t applicable to people’s responses to authority in everyday life.
The test subjects were all males within a specific age group. So the data obtained from the experiment cannot necessarily apply to the population. However, the same experiment was later co inducted with women with similar results.
Because the experiment was an artificial test, and the test subjects were aware that they were being studied, it was argued that the study lacked “mundane realism” and was therefore lacked ecological validity
Analysis
65% of people were willing to continue giving the shocks. This suggests majority of participants were willing to continue giving the for all they knew deadly shocks in order to not disobey authority.
This links to the theory of an agent shift
This links to another study by Hofling (1966) conducted in a real life setting which makes it more reliable where nurses were instructed to cause potential harm to a patient by a Dr with majority obeying.
Other variations of the study that were proven to have an effect on obedience levels:
Location
Diluted responsibly
Proximity of authority figure
Presence of Allies
Location - obedience levels dropped to 48% when it was one run down office building instead of Yale.
Diluted responsibility - obedience levels were 90% if the assistant pushes the button, some participants felt that because the assistant is telling them what to do then they are not responsible.
Proximity of Authority figure - conformity dropped to 21% when experimenter was no longer in the room.
Presence of Allies - if other people are present and refuse to obey, obedience goes down. Only 10% obeyed if once two confederates were added and refused to obey.
