Milgram

• 40 male volunteers

  at yale university

  deceived and told it was a study on 'learning and memory'

  androcentric beta bias
• participants may have felt discouraged from withdrawing from the study due to receiving money in return for participating and due to the verbal prompts encouraging them to continue
• electric shocks range from 15V to 450V
• the participant would teach the learner word pairs

  when the learner got it wrong they would receive an electric shock, increasing in strength with each incorrect answer

  after 300V, the learner would stop responding
• 65% of participants went up to 450V

  nobody stopped before reaching 300V
• people are more likely to conform to a legitimate authority figure

  • uniform, location, proximity of victim, proximity of authority figure
• Milgram - presence of allies

  • done by having multiple teachers (confederates)
  • the real participants were more likely to disobey the experimenter if others also refused to obey
  • allies made it easier to resist orders from authority
• Milgram - proximity of victim

  when the teacher and the learner were in the same room, the percentage of participants who went up to 450V decreased from 65% to 40%
• Milgram - proximity of authority

  when the authority figure gave orders over the phone rather than in person, obedience rates decreased to 23%
• Milgram - location

  when the experiment was moved to a run down office rather than Yale, the experimenter's association with Yale was removed

  making it easier to resist their orders

  and so the percentage of participants who administered the maximum shock decreased to 48%