Situational variables affecting obedience

• The Aims of Milgram’s (1963) original obedience research

  To investigate whether people will obey an order from an authority figure to inflict pain on another person.
• Procedures of Milgram’s (1963) original obedience research

  Forty American men aged 20-50 volunteered for a paid study at Yale on "punishment and learning." Each was assigned as the "teacher," instructed to give increasing shocks for the "learner's" wrong answers, though no actual shocks occurred. Pre-recorded tapes played the learner’s cries, and if the participant hesitated, the experimenter used prods like "you must go on." Participants were debriefed afterward.
• The findings of Milgram’s (1963) original obedience research

  • 100% of participants obeyed the experimenter’s instructions to administer an electric shock up until 300 volts. 65% of participants obeyed to the maximum 450 volts.

  • Most participants found the experience stressful and showed signs of distress (e.g. digging their nails into their flesh and sweating).
• Conclusions of Milgram’s (1963) original obedience research

  Most people will obey orders from an authority figure, even if those orders go against their conscience.
• What was Milgram’s proximity and location variations

  After his original obedience research, Milgram conducted a series of additional studies to investigate the extent to which different variables affect obedience. These variables included: proximity and location.
• Milgram’s proximity

  Proximity refers to the physical distance between individuals. Milgram conducted three proximity variations whereby he varied the proximity either between the participant (teacher) and the confederate (learner) [referred to as proximity of the victim] or the participant and the experimenter [referred to as proximity of the authority figure].
• What did Milgram find when he increased the proximity between the participant (teacher) and confederate (learner) by placing them in the same room?

  Obedience rates decreased from 65% (as seen in the original research when the learner was out of sight in a different room) to 40%.
• What did Milgram find when he increased the proximity

  between the participant (teacher) and confederate (learner) by

  instructing the teacher to hold the learner’s hand onto the electric shock plate.

  Obedience rates decreased from 65% (as seen in the original research) to 30%.
• What did Milgram find when he decreased the proximity between the participant and experimenter by making the experimenter leave the room and give orders via a telephone.

  Obedience rates decreased from 65% (as seen in the original research when the experimenter was in the same room) to 20.5%.
• what did Milgram do/find when he varied the location by changing the research setting to a run-down office block?

  Milgram’s original obedience research took place at the prestigious Yale

  University. So he did it in an Office block too.

  He found that Obedience rates decreased from 65% in the original research to 47.5%.
• Describe Bickman’sresearch on uniform

  Procedures:

  In a field experiment, Bickman had three confederates ask passers-by to perfom tasks such as picking up litter. These confederates were either dressed in:

  • A jacket and tie

  • A milkman’s outfit

  • A security guard’s uniform

  Findings:

  Passers by were most obedient to the security guard.
• evaluate research into situational variables affecting obedience and discuss this tells us about why people obey.

  • they provide information as to why people obey
  • what they tell us about why people obey is that there was a high level of control in the research
  • what they tell us about why people obey is that there is contradictory evidence