Obedience

• Aims and procedure- Milgrams 1963 study

  • Aimed to see how far people would go hurting others despite it resulting in fatal consequences
  • Experimenter asked participants to increasingly turn up the volts to shock the learner when they answered questions in word pairing task incorrect- was led to believe the shocks were real
  • At 300v the learner banged on the wall and stopped answering
  • If participants raised questions then the experimenter used a list of prods
• What did Milgram 1963 find?

  That 65% of participants obeyed to full 450v

  100% obeyed to 300v
• Evaluate Milgram 1963 study:

  • Low generalisability due to participants being white males in the 1960s so seen as outdated
  • Controlled setting which means procedure is standardised resulting in it being replicated easily- seen in Burger 2009
  • however, each participant received different number of prods some 4 and some 20- different behaviour
  • Lab experiment with high internal validity
  • Lacks ecological validity as in real life obedience people would not be measured this way
  • awful ethics- participates were shaking and sweating
• What is locus of control?

  People believe that they have internal control over themselves and the outcome of their lives
• What is the agency theory ?

  We have two states that enable us to function on our own or with others. The autonomous state- behaviour that is 'self directed' as we are at liberty to choose how to behave. When meeting others we quickly judge if the person is higher or lower on the social hierachy the extent to which they have legitimate authority. This changes to the agentic state which is called the 'agent shift'. We become an agent acting on behalf of authority figure leading to follow the orders and to obey this. May cause moral strain- anxiety
• Supporting evidence for agency theory

  milgrams 1963 experiment found that 100% of participants would administer a shock of 300v to a confederate as a punishment for incorrect answering on word learning task.
• Conflicting evidence for agency theory

  Rank and Jacobsons 1977 study with the nurses found that 16 out of 18 nurses failed to obey orders from a doctor that asked them to administer an overdose of the drug valium. Showing that despite doctors being members of authority the nurses remained autonomous
• Variations on Milgram- experiment 7

  • instructions are given at the start then experimenter leaves the room and left with telephone and shock generator
  • prods delivered over the phone
  • 22% obeyed
• Variations on Milgram-experiment 10

  • The setting of the experiment was moved to a shabby looking office environment in Bridgeport which detracted from the legitimate authority of the laboratory
  • followed procedure from original study
  • 47.5% obeyed
• Variations on Milgram- experiment 13

  • The original study used Mr Williams as the Experimenter, who looked severe and wore a lab coat.
  • Mr Williams explains the procedure to the participant but then is called away. Crucially, Mr Williams does not tell the Teachers to increase the shock by 15V with each incorrect answer.
  • Confederate in the room suggests a new way of doing the study, by talking the voltage up 15v each time
  • only 20% obeyed
• Situational factors effecting obedience

  Legitimacy and status of authority

  • obedience is only shown if the authority figureis perceived as legitimate
  • In Milgram's research, the researcher had legitimate authority, andthis was exaggerated by the lab coat which connoted expertise and knowledge
• Situational factors effecting obedience

  Personal responsibility

  • Obedience will be higher if the personal responsibility is given to the authority figure
  • Shown in Milgrams study as participants are assured they are not responsible
• Personality differences effecting obedience

  Locus of control

  • This is the reasons that people give for what happens to them
  • Elms and Milgram 1974 found that disobedient participants in Milgrams research had a high locus of control
• Personality differences effecting obedience

  Authoritarian

  • Adorno proposed that individual differences in obedience could be explained by 'authoritarian personality'
  • found that measuring using the 'F-scale' (F stands for fascist). High F scores indicate higher obedience to authority
• Gender and obedience- Kilham and Mann

  Study conducted in Australia replicating Milgram. Where 40% of males went to the fully obedient level compared to 16% of females. This may be due to a dispositional effect for an Australian people (females in particular) which leads to a higher level of resistance to obedience, when in a moral situation.
• What did Meeus and Raaijmakers study?

  If obedience changes if harm is psychological rather than physical but also taking place in a liberal culture.

  Two groups were asked to give insults to a person completing a test, one of them were given a pre test list of insults to read out whilst the other could administer whatever insults they liked. They believe that the person doing the test will fail if they are too stressed.
• What did Meeus and Raaijmakers find?

  That 92% of experimental group obeyed to giving person psychological harm obedience was higher than milgrams study. This may be due to the difference in harm not being physical.
• who was included in Milgrams 1963 sample?

  40 males aged 20-50, recruited via volunteer sampling using an advert
• situational factors effecting obedience- Milgrams resarch

  • variation 7- proximity of authority, ment obedience declined as researchers left the room
  • variation 10- location, was changed in a run down office block as a posed to Yale university leading to 47.5% obeying
  • variation 13- status of authority, with a normal confederate asking to perform task in a certain way obedience decreased to 20%
• situational factors- isolation

  Hofling 1966 found that 21 out of 22 nurses obeyed the unknown doctors orders.  This goes to show that, when people are alone with no one else to turn to, they tend to be more obedient.