Milgram

• Milgram aim


  To investigate if ordinary people would obey an authority figure and inflict pain onto an innocent person
• Milgram method 1

  SAMPLE= 40 male Americans aged 20-50. through newspaper ad.

  1. first, all were invited to a lab at Yale University.
  2. Experimenter paired the participant with a confederate who acted as another participant. rigged draw where participant was always the role of the teacher, and confederate the learner.
  3. Teacher and learner had to go into separate rooms where teacher had to test learner on remembering list of words. Everytime one was wrong, teacher had to electric shock learner. increased as they went on from 15 volts to 450 in increments of 15.
• Milgram method 2


  4. the learner had to pretend to be in pain when admitted shocks Of 300 and above.

  5. If the teacher asked to stop, the experimenter, who was in the same room, would respond with series of verbal prods.
• Results of Milgram

  Those who went up to 450V (MAX)= 65%

  Those who went up 300V= 100%

  When asked why they did it, they said they only did it as they were told.
• Conclusion of Milgram=

  people are willing to obey orders of an authoritative figure and inflict harm on innocent person
• A03 Of Milgram- highly controlled

  P: One strength is the procedure was standardised and highly controlled.

  Ev: As the learner was given the same prompts to carry on with the study,

  Ex: It shows the study was high internal validity as casual relationship is trustworthy due to control over procedure.
• A03 Of Milgram- Methodology

  One strength is the sample represents target population.

  The target population was Nazi Germany Solders who were all male. As all ppts were male, its representative. Thus the findings represent the actions of the target population which increases the interna validity.
• A03 Of Milgram- Methodology

  although the sample is representative of nazi germany soldiers, the sampling method used was volunteer. Ppts will have similar personalities as they will all be confident enough to volunteer, so are more likely to continue with the task. This means there is a low population validity as it may be unrepresentative.