Obedience and Milgram's study

• Aim 


  To test if people would change their behaviour in the presence of an authority figure
• Method 


  Learner had to recall word pairs, if not the learner received a shock from the teacher (shockers weren't real but teacher did not know this). For each mistake the voltage of the shock increased from 15V to 450V. After 300V the learner stopped responding. All the way through the teacher was told to continue by the experimenter
• Method - Participants 


  40 male volunteers - Naïve pp is the teacher - Confederates is the learner
• Results


  All participants went to 300V. 12.5% stopped at 300V. 60% of participants went to 450V.
• Results - teacher


  Observations showed that the teachers showed clear signs of distress e.g. sweat, trembling, stutter and digging nails into flesh
• Conclusion

  Obedience can be better explained by situational factors for example the presence of an authority figure
• Evaluation - Positives

  Research support
• Evaluation - Negatives


  Artificial task , Ethical issues
• Follow up 


  Other factors influence obedience such as : location, proximity of experiment, uniform