Social Psychology Studies Flashcards
Milgram (1974)
Aim
Aim
How far people would obey, even if they know they are harming someone.
Milgram (1974)
Procedure
Procedure
Sample of 40 men from New Haven
Volunteer Sample
– Introduced to a confederate, disguised as a learner.
– Learner strapped to an electric chair
– Participant begins to test the learner, who deliberately gets answers wrong.
– Pp told to shock each time, increasing voltage each time
– When pp refused to shock, he was given a series of prods from the experimenter.
–
Milgram (1974)
Findings
Findings
- 65% of participants inflicted the full level of shock on the learner.
- 100% went up to 350V
– He carried out 18 variations altering the IV
Milgram (1974)
Conclusion
Conclusion
– realistic explanation is the situation they were in influenced them and this led to them to behaving in the way that they did.
– situation may have influenced their behaviour
ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, obedience to authority is ingrained all of us.
people tend to obey orders from other people if they recognize their authority as morally right/legally based.
Burger (2009)
Aim
To evaluate if Milgrams study will produce the same results upon replication with modern participants also investigates if personality variables like empathy and locus of control influence obedience.
Burger (2009)
Procedure
The procedure replicates Milgram’s variation #5 on his baseline study. The experimenter is a white man in his 30s; the confederate (learner) is in his 50s.
The script resembles Milgram’s but the test shock that the participant receives is only 15V rather than Milgram’s painful 45V. The teacher watches the learner being strapped into the electric chair and then sits at the shock generator in an adjacent room.
The teacher reads out 25 multiple choice questions and the learner uses a buzzer to indicate the answer. If answer is wrong, the experimenter directs the teacher to deliver a shock, going up in 15V intervals.
At 75V the learner starts making sounds of pain. At 150V the learner cries that he wants to stop and complains about chest pains.
If the teacher moves to deliver the 165V shock, the experimenter stops the experiment.
In the “model refusal” condition, a second confederate pretends to be a second teacher. At 90V the confederate teacher turns to the naïve participant and says “I don’t know about this.” He refuses to go on and the experimenter tells the naïve participant to take over delivering the shocks.
Burger used questionnaires to measure individual differences that might be factors in obedience:
Burger 09
Findings
Burger found that 70% of participants in the baseline condition were prepared to go past 150V, compared to 82.5% in Milgram’s Variation #5. This sounds like a big difference but it is not statistically significant given the number of people involved.
Burger 09
Conclusion
Burger concludes that Milgram’s results still stand half a century later. People are still influenced by situational factors to obey an authority figure, even if it goes against their moral values.
Milgram experiment 7
telephonic instructions
Milgram wanted to test the physical distance between the teacher and the experimenter left after giving the initial face to face instructions the experimenter left the room and instructions proceeded over the phone. Ppts willing to give the max 450V shock decreased from 65% to 22.5%. The ppts would also lie to the experimenter about increasing the voltage of the shocks
Milgram experiment 10
Rundown Office Block
Ppts were recruited through mailshot recruitment and paid for their time. Milgram found a slight reduction in obedience of 48% concluding that the less reputable context reduced the legitimacy of the study. He also reported that ppts questioned the credentials of the company on arrival
Milgram Experiment 13
Ordinary man
This variation was designed to test the role of authority and status on obedience. Milgram found that 80% broke off before maximum level, resulting in a 20% obedience rate. All 16 ppts protested to this situation and five physically restrained the learner or tampered with the shock generator to end the experiment. The remaining 11 allowed the learner to administer a 450V level of shock resulting in a 68.75% obedience level.
Evaluation - Hofling et al (1966) - Research to support (agency theory)
staged a study in a hospital setting. A doctor telephoned a nurse telling them to administer double the daily dose of a drug to a patient. This happened against hospital policy in which the doctor said they would sign the prescription later. 21 out of 22 nurses followed the doctors orders and attempted to administer the drug to the patient. Several of the nurses justified their behaviour as following orders of the hierarchy of authority. This supports the agency theory because the majority of nurses displaced their personal responsibility.
Berkowitz, Bickman and Milgram (1969)
Conducted a study that demonstrates this reduction in social impact. They got between 1-15 confederates to congregate on the street and crane their necks up to look at the sixth floor of the building. the videos were analysed and the number of passers by who stopped were counted. They found increasing the number of confederates craning their neck did increase the number of by passers by imitating their actions, the number of passers by grew smaller relative to the size of the confederate group
Latane and Darley (1970)
They found that a lone person was more likely to help someone in need compared to a group of people; there was a diffusion of responsibility similar to a divisional effect. In terms of obedience it would suggest that an authority figure would have diminished capacity to influence someone if that someone had an ally or group of allies.
