Milgram's study

• What is the first step in Milgram's procedure?

  he recruited 40 male participants by advertising for volunteers for a memory study at Yale University
• What is the second step?

  Everyone was paid $4.50. They would get this even if they quit
• What is the third step, what happened after they arrived?

  they were met by an experimenter wearing a grey lab coat
• What happened after the experimenter met them?

  they were introduced to Mr Wallace (47 year old accountant) who was a confederate pretending to be a participant
• What happens after the introduction to Mr Wallace?

  one would be the teacher and one the learner. It was rigged so Mr Wallace would always be the learner
• What did Mr Wallace say he had?

  a heart problem
• What did the experimenter tell the participant and Mr Wallace?

  the experiment was about the effects on punishment on learning
• What was the teacher told to do?

  deliver the shocks via a shock generator in an adjacent room
• What did the generator have?

  a number of switches, each clearly marked with a voltage level, starting at 15V (slight shock) to 450V (danger-severe shock). Went up by 15V
• What was the reality of the shocks?

  they weren't delivered
• What did they do in the adjoining room?

  Mr Wallace was strapped into a chair with his arms attached to electrodes
• What was the teacher instructed to do each time Mr Wallace made a mistake?

  deliver a shock each time he made a mistake on a paired-associate word task.
• What did Mr Wallace have to do in the experiment?

  switched one of four lights located above the shock generator to indicate his answer. With each mistake, the teacher had to give the next highest shock.
• What was the participant (teacher) given before the experiment started)?

  a sample shock of 45V from a hidden battery
• What did the learner give in the experiment?

  gave mainly wrong answers. He received his shocks in silence until 300V where he kicked the wall, then fell silent
• Symptoms Mr Wallace gave

  cried out in pain, complained his heart was bothering him then gave no responses
• What are the standardized set of prods the experimenter would give?

  Please continue

  The experiment requires you to continue

  It is absolutely essential that you continue

  You have no choice, you must go on
• What happened if the participant refused to continue after the 4th prod?

  the experiment stopped
• 14 defiant participants stopped early

  5: 300V

  4: 315V

  2: 330V

  1: 345V

  1: 360V

  1: 375V
• What percent of people continued to 450V?

  65%
• How many variations did Milgram carry out?

  18, he altered the IV
• What did all participants continue to?

  300V
• What was the mean of the post experiment interview?

  13.42
• What was the mode of the post experiment interview?

  14
• What were extreme signs of tension shown?

  • sweating
  • biting lip
  • trembling
  • stuttering
  • digging nails
  • nervous laughter
  • uncontrollable laughter seizures
• What happened before the study?

  14 psychology students predicted no more than 3% of people would continue to 450V
• Strength: Research support P+E

  P: replicated in a French documentary made about reality TV

  E: The documentary (Beauvois et al 2012) focused on a game show made for a programme. The participants in the game believed they were contestants in a pilot episode for a new show.

  They were paid to give fake electric shocks to other participants (actors) in front of a studio audience.

  80% delivered the maximum shock of 460V to an apparently unconscious man.

  Behaviour: nervous laughter, nail biting and anxiety
• Strength: Research support T

  T: This supports Milgram's original findings about obedience to authority and demonstrates the findings were not just due to special circumstances.
• Limitation: Low internal validity P+E

  P: Milgram's procedure may not have been testing what he intended to test

  E: Milgram reported 75% of participants believed the shocks were genuine. But, Orne and Holland (1968) argued that participants behaved as they did because they didn't really believe in the set up, so they were acting.

  Perry's (2013) research confirms this. She listened to tapes of Milgram's participants and reported about half of them believed the shocks were real.

  2/3 of these participants were disobedient
• Limitation: Low internal validity T

  T: TST participants may have been responding to demand characteristics, trying to fulfil the aims of the study
• Counterpoint to Low internal validity

  E: Sheridan and King (1972) conducted a study using a procedure like Milgram's.

  The participants gave real shocks to a puppy in response to orders from an experimenter.

  Despite the distress of the animal, 54% of the male participants and 100% of the females delivered what they thought was a fatal shock

  T: TST the effects in Milgram's study were genuine because people behaved obediently even when the shocks were real.
• Limitation: Alternative interpretation of findings P+E

  P: Milgram's conclusions about blind obedience may not be justified

  E: Haslam et al (2014) showed that Milgram's participants obeyed when the experimenter delivered the first 3 prods.

  But, every participant who was given the 4th prod without exception disobeyed.

  According to social identity theory, participants only obeyed when they identified with the scientific aims of the research. When they were ordered to blindly obey an authority figure, they refused.
• Limitation: Alternative interpretation of findings T

  T: TST Social identity theory may provide a more valid interpretation of Milgram's findings, especially as Milgram himself suggested that identifying with science is a reason for obedience.
• Limitation: Ethical issues

  P: participants in the study were deceived

  E: the participants thought the allocation of roles (teacher and learner) was random, but it was fixed.

  They also thought the shocks were real.

  Milgram dealt with this by debriefing participants, but Baumrind (1964) criticised him for deception. She objected because she believed that deception in psychological studies can have serious consequences for participants and researchers.