Milgram

• Procedure


  40 participants aged 20-50 volunteered to take part

  Paid on arrival

  Participants drew lots to see who would be the teacher and who would be the learner - draw fixed so the participant is always the teacher

  Learner is a confederate of Milgram

  Participants told they could leave at any time

  Learner strapped to chair and wired with electrodes

  Shocks demonstrated to the teacher - the are not real after this demo

  Teacher told to demonstrate increasingly severe electric shocks each time the learner makes a mistake in the memory test
• Procedure


  At 300 volts the learner would bang on the wall and give no response to the next question

  After 315 volts the learner would bang on the wall and there was no future response

  When teacher asked experimenter for guidance the standard response was 'an absence of an answer should be treated as a wrong answer'

  If the teacher was unsure about continuing the responses were said:

  'Please go on'

  'It is essential that you continue'
• Findings

  No participant stopped before 300 volts

  12.5% stopped at 300 volts

  65% continued to 450 volts (fully obedient)

  There was obvious signs of stress

  Prior to the study, students predicted that no more than 3% of participants would continue to 450 volts

  All participants debriefed and 84% said that they were glad they took part
• Conclusions


  Concluded that Germans were not different - the point of the experiment was to see why Germans were obedient during Nazi Germany

  Participants were willing to obey orders even when they might harm another person
• Strength


  The research was replicated - shows that the findings were not just due to special circumstances
• Limitation - low internal validity


  Orne and Holland believed that participants behaved the way they did because they did not believe in the set up and so they were play acting

  Perry's research shows that only half of the participants believed that the shocks were real

  This suggests that participants may have been responding to demand characteristics
• What does PUL stand for?


  P - proximity

  U - uniform

  L - location
• Proximity


  Decreased proximity allows people to psychologically distance themselves from the consequences of their actions

  eg: when the teacher and the learner were physically separated, the teacher was less aware of the harm they were causing - they were MORE obedient
• Proximity variation


  Teacher and learner are in the same room

  Obedience dropped from 65% to 40%
• Touch proximity variation


  Teacher forces learners' hand onto electric shock plate if he refuses to put it there

  Obedience dropped from 65% to 30%
• Remote instruction variation


  Experimenter left the room and gave instructions to teacher by telephone

  Obedience dropped from 65% to 20.5% - participants often pretended to give electric shocks
• Uniform variation


  Experimenter called away via telephone at the start of the procedure.

  Experimenter then played by a 'member of the public' (confederate) in everyday clothes

  Obedience dropped to 20% - lowest of all variations
• Uniform


  Uniforms encourage obedience because they are associated with symbols of authority
• Location variation

  Milgram conducted a variation in a run down office block rather than at Yale University

  Obedience fell to 47.5%
• Location

  Prestigious University environment gave the study legitimacy and authority - participants were more obedient in this location

  Obedience in the office block was still quite high because they sensed the scientific nature of the study
• Weakness of variations - low internal validity


  Participants may have been aware that the procedure was faked - even more likely in variations

  Hard to tell whether findings are due to the actual experiment or whether the participants were 'play acting' and responding to demand characteristics
• Strength of variations - research support


  Bickman had three confederates dress in 3 different outfits: 1 dressed in a jacket and tie, 1 dressed as a milkman and 1 dressed in a security guards uniform

  The confederates stood in the street and asked passers by to complete tasks like picking up litter or handing over a coin for a parking meter

  People were twice as likely to obey the confederate dressed as a security guard compared to the confederate dressed in a jacket and tie

  Therefore it is clear that uniform does have a large effect on obedience