Weaknesses

• One limitation is that there are ethical issues associated with Milgram's research.
• Firstly Milgram deceived his participants by lying about the experiments aims and the fact the other ppt was a confederate.
• He also caused potential psychological harm to participants as they may have felt distress as being capable of inflicting shocks to others.
• This is a problem because participants were not protected and this could cause the reputation of psychology to be damaged.
• However--- Cost/Benefit analysis
• One issue is that Milgram's research lacked internal validity.
• It is suggested that participants may have guessed that the shocks were fake, which would mean Milgram wasn't actually testing obedience and the results were instead influenced by demand characteristics.
• This is a problem because it suggests Milgram did not measure what he intended to, meaning the results have little use in explaining obedience.
• COUNTERPOINT:

  Sheridan and King conducted a similar study where participants delivered fake shocks to puppies.

  They found that 54% of males and 100% of females believed the shocks were real in this case.

  This means that Milgram's ppts may actually have believed that the shocks were genuine.
• One limitation is that Milgram's research lacked population validity.
• This is because only male American volunteers(certain type of personality) were used in the study. This sample is not representative of females or people from other countries.
• This is a problem because it cannot be concluded that those with other cultural experiences, or female participants would respond in a similar way to that observed by Milgram.

  -> This does not display those in collectivist cultures.
• EXTRA-LAB STUDY

  One issue with Milgram's study is it's lab based setting.
• This is because the task( giving electric shocks) is very different to everyday life obedience where people are more likely to follow harmless instructions.
• Additionally, the lab setting is not reflective of a real life environment in which people would typically obey.
• This is a problem because it suggests that the study lacks ecological validity and cannot be applied to real life obedience.