Obedience: Milgram's research

• The aim of the study was to investigate whether people would obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform actions that conflicted with their personal conscience.
• Procedure:

  • The teacher and learner were placed in separate rooms - the teacher asked the learner questions. Incorrect answer = electric shock.
  • The shocks started at 15 V and increased by 15 V with each incorrect answer to a max of 450 V. No actual shocks were given, but the teacher believed they were real. The learner (confederate) would act out responses, expressing discomfort, pain, or even refusing to answer.
  • If the teacher hesitated or wanted to stop, the experimenter (confederate) used prompts like “Please continue” or “The experiment requires you to continue.”
• Milgram’s study took place at Yale University and involved a sample of 40 male participants, recruited through newspaper ads and paid for their participation.
• Milgram found that a significant majority of participants were willing to administer shocks up to very high levels:

  • 65% of participants continued to the maximum shock level of 450 volts, even when the learner screamed or went silent, implying they were seriously harmed.
  • All participants continued to at least 300 volts.
• These results allowed Milgram to conclude that ordinary people were surprisingly obedient to authority, even when it conflicted with their morals and potentially caused harm to others.
• A criticism of Milgram's study is its ethical issues, particularly deception and psychological harm. Participants were misled to believe they were administering real shocks, which led to intense stress and emotional discomfort for some. Also, this deception means that Milgram failed to get informed consent from his participants which violates ethical guidelines. This weakens Milgram's study as it can be argued that ethical guidelines should be followed at all times, and participants should never be put in harm for the sake of research.
• A weakness of Milgram's study is that the artificial laboratory setting in which Milgram conducted his study reduces its ecological validity. Orne and Holland (1968) suggested that participants might not have genuinely believed they were administering real shocks, as the lab setting and unusual task of delivering electric shocks to a stranger seemed unrealistic. This limitation means that the findings may not generalise to real life as Orne and Holland suggested that participants might have been displaying demand characteristics, rather than truly obeying an authority figure.
• A strength is that it is supported by findings from Hofling et al, which demonstrate obedience in a real-life setting. Hofling instructed nurses in a hospital by phone to administer a high dose of an unfamiliar drug. Despite hospital rules against taking phone orders and using unfamiliar medications, 21 out of 22 nurses (95%) prepared to administer the drug when directed by a “doctor” they had never met. This high level of obedience supports Milgram’s finding that people often follow orders from authority figures, even when it conflicts with personal or ethical standards.
• A strength of Milgram's research is that it has high internal validity. This is because it was conducted in a highly controlled laboratory setting, allowing for precise control over variables such as the experimenter’s prompts and the shock levels. This means that it is likely Milgram measured what he intended to measure - obedience to an authority figure. This strengthens the credibility of Milgram’s conclusions about obedience.
• Milgram’s study was influenced by events during World War II, specifically the Holocaust, where Nazi soldiers claimed they were “just following orders” to justify their participation in atrocities.

  • Milgram wanted to understand if ordinary people would follow orders from an authority figure, even if those orders conflicted with their personal morals
• Obedience is a form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order.

  • This order is usually given by an authority figure, who has the power to punish if the order is not followed.