Milgram

• Aim

  To investigate obedience to an authority figure
• Participants

  Naive ppt - teacher

  Confederate - learner

  Experimenter
• Procedure

  40 men answered a newspaper advert volunteering to take part in the experiment

  
  

  The learner had to remember word pairs that the teacher read to them and if they got them wrong, they received a shock, starting at 45 volts and increasing in 15 volt increments up to 450

  
  

  Prods were used to encourage ppts to continue if they asked advice or wanted to leave such as 'please continue
• Results

  There were signs of tension in ppts, and one had a seizure

  
  

  All ppts went up to 300V

  
  

  After 300V, 14 ppts disobeyed the experimenter

  
  

  26 ppts obeyed all the way up to 450V
• 2 positive evaluations

  - high internal validity —> all ppts believed the situation to be true

  
  

  - ethical - all ppts were thoroughly debriefed
• 2 negative evaluations

  - uninformed consent - ppts were told they were in a study of memory, not obedience

  
  

  - low ecological validity - the task didn't reflect obedience in real life
• Milgram's situational variables

  Proximity, uniform, location
• Proximity

  If the naive ppt could see the learner, they were less obedient as they were more aware of the harm they were causing
• Uniform

  Obedience levels rose when the experimenter was wearing a grey lab coat
• Location

  The experiment was at Yale university, which is very prestigious and has more legitimate authority - obedience levels increased