Milgrims Obedience Reseaech

Question 1

What is obedience

Answer 1

A type of social influence whereby someone acts in response to a direct order from a perceived figure of authority

Question 2

Aim

Answer 2

How far people will go in obeying and instruction against their moral intuition in response to a figure of authority

Question 3

Procedure

Answer 3

-40 American males aged 20-50 that had volunteers from a newspaper ad
-The Pp were introduced to each other but one was a confederate
-They drew straws to determine their roles as either learners or teachers however this was fixed
-Teacher and experimenter in a separate room from the learner
-Whenever the learner made mistakes in a memory test, the teacher was told to administer a shock starting at 15V and ranging to 450V with the signage of XXX next to it
-Their were 4 prods that the experimenter would give if the teacher didn’t want to continue eg. The experimenter requires that you continue

Question 4

Findings

Answer 4

-All pp - 300V
-65% - 450V
-Participants experienced extreme tension eg.sweating and groaning with 3 people even being subjected to uncontrollable seizures

Question 5

Conclusions

Answer 5

Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing a human being

Question 6

Supporting research

Answer 6

-Holding
-Real nurses were asked by a ‘doctor’ over the phone to administer a large, potentially lethal dose of unknown medicine to a patient
-21/22 nurses delivered the medicine

-Backup Milgrims claims that we will obey potentially threatening orders from an authority figure

• +EV

Question 7

Cross cultural research

Answer 7

-A meta analysis of conformity research found the same results with high conformity to authority figures

-Conformity to a figure of authority is generalizable outside of America

-Not culturally relative

Question 8

Demand characteristics

Answer 8

-Research found that only 1/2 of the participants thought the shocks were real and of those, 2/3 disobeyed
-So only really 1/6 obeyed authority

-So the findings don’t accurately portray reality since the task was so extreme

• -IV

Question 9

Ethical considerations

Answer 9

-3 participants had uncontrollable seizures

-Doesn’t follow current BPS guidelines

-Can’t replicate

Question 10

Additional PEEL’s

Answer 10

Socially sensitive
All male study