he wanted to find out if ordinary American citizens would obey an unjust order from an authority figure and inflict pain on another person when told to do so
What was the sample? How were they acquired?
40 males with a range of backgrounds and occupations via self-selection responding to a newspaper
(they were offered $4.50)
Procedure.
pps were told that the study was on 'punishment and learning'
pps met with the experiment and 'another pp' (conferderate)
'randomly assigned' the role of teacher or learner (always given teacher)
teacher and learner in adjacent rooms and learner 'strapped' to chair
teacher would asks the learner questions and if they made a mistake they would be given an electric shock where the voltage would increase after every mistake
Findings.
all real pps went to at least 300V and 65% continued until the full 450V
he concluded that under the right circumstances ordinary people will obey unjust orders
Ethical issues
the experimenter didn't allow the pps right to withdrawal as when they asked to leave they would respond with "the study requires for you to continue"
the pps were also deceived as they were not told the true aim of the experiment
Lack of population validity
the sample was gender biased as all the pps were male - this means that the findings cannot be generalised to women
