Milgram: obedience

Question 1

Background - Milgram

Answer 1

1. Born in NYC
2. Jewish family
3. PhD at Harvard under Allport’s supervision on national character
4. Research assistant to Asch

Question 2

Background - the holocaust

Answer 2

1. What led to the persecution of the minority groups by Nazis
2. Why did normal people obey orders that countered their values

Question 3

Background - the banality of evil

Answer 3

1. Hannah Arendt - reported on the Eichmann trial (person who set up the camps)
2. To her, Eichmann did not appear to be a monster but described him as an uninspired bureaucrat who sat at his desk and did his job

Question 4

background - the lack of relevance of psychology

Answer 4

1. Milgram was frustrated by the gap between research and reality
2. Asch’s experiment being about lines dissatisfied him

Question 5

The studies

Answer 5

1. Large series of studies with 24 variations
2. The very first study had no complaints from the student - 100% compliance
3. 780+ subjects across all studies
   Study number 5 - learner with “heart condition”, complains moans and shouts, physical separation of learner and teacher, experiment in same room as teacher
4. Results - 40 people in study number 5, 26 carried to the end, 5 people drop out at first complaints
5. Prediction by psychologists - <1% who could be labelled as psychopaths

Question 6

Ethics

Answer 6

1. Bettelheim - research was “so vile that nothing these experiments show have any value, they are in line with the human experiments of the nazis”
2. NYT - it wasn’t the participants who showed ‘destructive obedience’ but the experimenters - as the studies were clearly extremely distressing for participants
3. Baumrind - i do regard the emotional disturbance described by milgram as potentially harmful because it could easily effect an alteration in the subject’s self image
4. Protocol - experimenter uses 4 prods but no other pressure - prods are “please continue”, “the experiment requires that you continue”, “it is absolutely essential that you continue”, “you have no other choice, you must go on”
5. Participants claimed this was untrue, the experimenter prompted many more times, over 20, and women were “railroaded” but the experimenter e.g. bought them coffee
6. Milgram claimed all participants were debriefed, Gina Perry looked through archival data 50 years later and interviews some subjects, found that a 2 minute briefing where the behaviour was explained as natural, a fuller explanation was mailed a year later, milgram deliberately delayed debriefing to ensure other participants wouldn’t know the nature until the study was done
   Subject 711 - “experiment left such an effect on me… because of fears that i might have killed that man” as were not told he was fine
7. Basic study replicated 24 times from 1963 - 1985 across the world

Question 7

Debate and controversy

Answer 7

1. Were participants really deceived or were they responding to demand characteristics - [participants noticed that the learner never responded to them, sounds seemed to be audio recordings, milgram said this was because they were trying to justify their actions
2. Ecological validity - does it tell us about reality given the setup is not encountered, hofling et al - 21/22 nurses overdosed patients after a call from a “doctor”
3. Milgram’s research shows that people conform to authority but it doesn’t explain why they do it or why the variations - when asked he then identified the readiness to relinquish responsibility (agentic state) and concentric fields of influence (proximity)
4. Blass points to a number of other key features of the study - incremental steps (people find it more justifiable) and self-consistency
5. Theories used to explain - social impact theory and self-categorisation theory
6. Social impact theory - we are influenced by authority figures as a function of their strength, immediacy and number
7. Self categorisation theory - influenced by authority figures to the extent that we identity with the group they represent e.g. scientist and are influenced to harm others because we don’t identify with them - engaged followership
8. Interpretation - Burger replicated but his findings questioned whether participants were really following orders by looking at responses to experimental prods, 100% disobey when ordered, more obey when please continue

Question 8

Impact and legacy

Answer 8

1. Informed debate in theology, ethics, management, law, history
   2, Massive impact on scientific and public understanding on forms of evil
2. Affected ideas on ethical considerations based on participant distress and long term effects of participation