Situational A03

• Bickman

  Obedience to uniform: three male experimenters dressed as milkman, security guard or wearing jacket and tie. Stood in street and asked people to give a coin for parking or cleaning litter. People twice as likely to obey security guard than man in jacket and tie
• Orne and Holland


  Criticised that participants could see through the deception and there was a lack of internal validity
• Extra manipulation


  Experimenter leaving and being replaced with a member of the public
• Contrived situation

  Milgram recognised that the experiment setup was artificial
• Cross cultural replications

  Replications of the study in different cultures
• Miranda et al

  Study showing high obedience rate in Spain with Spanish students. 90% obedience rate.
• Smith and Bond

  Argued that the replications (e.g: spain ) were not culturally different from the USA
• Control of variables

  Systematic alteration of one variable at a time
• Replicated over and over

  Study was repeated with 1000 participants in total
• Obedience Alibi

  Milgram's findings support a situational explanation for obedience
• David Mandel's criticism

  Argues that situational explanation is an 'alibi' for evil behavior
• Offense to Holocaust survivors

  Suggesting that Nazis were only following orders and were victims themselves