Obedience- Milgram’s research

• Obedience


  Defined as a form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order. The person issuing the order is usually a figure of authority, who has the power to punish when obedient behaviour is not forthcoming.
• Background behind Milgram’s study

  • Adolf Eichmann, a German solider was hung for his part in the murder or millions of jews during the holocaust, when asked why he had done it he said he was ‘simply obeying orders’
  • Milgram, sought to answer why the German Population followed the orders of Hitler and agreed to help kill 10 million Jewish people in the holocaust.
  • He wanted to know if German people are more obedient.
• Aim of Milgram’s study

  • Milgram was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person.
  • Milgram was interested in how easily ordinary people could influenced into committing atrocities e.g Germans in WW2.
• Procedure of Milgram’s study

  • 40 male US participants, who volunteered after seeing newspaper adverts and flyers in the post. Initially advertised as a study investigating ‘how punishment affects learning’
  • Rigged draw for participants role
  • Genuine participant (teacher) and told to administer electric shocks to the learner each time he made a mistake
  • 2 confederates (learner, experimenter)
  • Learner gave mainly wrong answers and received fake electric shocks fro 15-450 volts, at this point he pounded on the wall and gave no response to the next question.
• How did the experimenter react when the teacher felt unsure?

  • The experimenter used a sequence of verbal prods
  • ‘please continue’
  • ‘the experiment requires that you continue’
• Findings of Milgram’s study

  • All participants obeyed up to at least 300v
  • 12.5% of participants stopped at 300 volts
  • 65% of participants continued to the highest level of 450v
  • Participants showed signs of extreme tension, many were seen to sweat, tremble, stutter
  • 3 participants passed out
• Conclusion from Milgram’s study

  • Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being
  • Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up.
• Describe one study into obedience. In your answer include what the participants had to do in the study and what was found?

  • The participant had to act as a teacher and administer electric shocks to the learners each time the learner made a mistake on the learning task.
  • The teacher had to increase the electric shock by 15v each time.
  • All participants obeyed up to at least 300v
  • 65% of participants continued to the highest level of 450v
  • The participants showed signs of extreme tension, many were seen to sweat, tremble
  • 3 participants passed out
• Research support for Milgram’s research

  • Findings were replicated by a French documentary called the Game of death
  • Similar to Milgram’s experiment, participants believed they were in a pilot game show called ‘la zone xtreme’ and were paid to give fake electric shocks when ordered to by the presenter.
  • Findings supported Milgram’s results, 80% of participants delivered maximum shocks up to 450V and behaviour of the participants were identification to Milgram’s e.g nervous laughter, nail biting
  • This supports Milgram’s original conclusion about obedience to authority.
• Low internal validity

  • For example, Orne and Holland argued that participants behaved the way they did because they did not believe the set up.
  • It may mean the study was not actually testing what it intended to measure. It identified the issues that the participants were changing their behaviour in order to please the experimenter (demand characteristics)
  • This suggests the results of Milgram’s experiment were not completely accurate and can be argued that they are not a valid representation of obedience.
• High external validity

  • Milgram’s findings are further supported by a study conducted by Hofling et al, who studied obedience in a hospital. Nurses were asked by an authority figure to five a higher dose of an unfamiliar drug to a patient. 21/22 nurses followed this order.
  • Milgram’s experiment firstly demonstrated how the lab experiment reflects wider authority relationships in a real-life context. Secondly, the study by Hofling et al implies the processes of obedience to authority can be replicated and generalised to other situations.
• Ethical issues

  • Milgram deceived his participants, by leading them to believe that the allocation of roles ‘teacher’ and ‘learner’ was random, but in fact it was fixed. Secondly, participants were made to believe the electric shocks they were administering were real. The verbal prods, had implications on the right to withdraw.
  • Deception is undesirable because it prevents participants from giving their fully informed consent to take part. The verbal prods made it difficult for the participants to leave the study when they wanted.
  • questions the extent to which the study was justified.