evaluation

• strength - research support part 1

  a strength of milligrams findings is that they were replicated 9na.french documentary.

  participants believed they were contestants in a game show Le jeu de la mort. They were paid to give (fake) electric shocks in front of a show audience.
• strength- research support part 2

  80% of the participants delivered the maximum shock of 460V to an apparently unconscious man. The behaviour was almost identical to they of Milgram's participants - nervous laughter, nail biting and other signs of anxiety.

  this supports Milgram's original finding about obedience to authority and demonstrates that the findings were not just do the special circumstances.
• limitation - low internal validity

  a limitation of milligrams procedure is that he may not have been testing what he set out to test.

  orne and holland argues that participants behaved as they did as hey did not believe o the set up so were 'play acting'

  Perrys research confirms this, she listened to taps of Milgram;s participants and reported only about half of them believed the shocks were real.

  this suggests that participants may have been responding to demand characteristics and been trying to fulfil the demands of the study.
• limitation - low internal validity - counterpoint

  however, Sheridan and king conducted a study using a procedure like milgrams.

  participants have real shocks to a puppy in response to orders from an experimenter

  despite the real distress of thee animal, 54% of the men and 100% of the women gave what they thought was a fatal shock.

  this suggests that the effects of milgrams study were genuine because people behaved obediently even when they shocks were real.
• ethics


  the participation in this study were deceived. they thought the roles were randomly allocated and that the shocks were real.

  for example they thought that the roles were randomly allocated and the shocks were real.

  milgram attempted to deal with this by debriefing his participants.

  the extent to which the end justifies the means and the impact these ethical issues have on the validity of this finding present a serious question for milgrams research.
• limitation - alternative interpretation of findings part 1

  a limitation is that milgrams conclusions on blind obedience may not be justified.

  Haslam et al showed that Milgrams participants obeyed when the experimenter delivered the first three verbal prods. However, every participant who was given the fourth prod without exception disobeyed.
• limitation - alternative interpretation of findings part 2

  according to the social identity theory participants only obeyed when they identified with the specific aims of the research. when they were ordered to blindly obey an authority figure, they refused.

  this shows that social identity theory may provide a more valid interpretation of milgrams findings, especially as Milgram himself suggested that 'identifying with the science' is a reason for obedience.