Obedience

• Milgram designed a baseline procedure to assess obedience levels
• In Milgram's baseline procedure 40 American men volunteered
•  Milgram's baseline procedure:

  • Each volunteer was introduced to another participant (secretly a confederate)
  • A rigged draw made the real participant 'teacher; and fake participant ‘learner’
  • Teacher delivered electric shocks every time the learner made a mistake and increased voltage each shock
  • The shock machine was labeled to suggest they were dangerous 
  • If the teacher wished to stop, the experimenter gave a verbal ‘prod’ to continue e.g., ‘please continue’
•  Milgrams baseline findings: 12.5% of (5 participants) stopped at 300 volts
• Milgram's baseline findings: 65% of participants continued to 450 volts (the highest level)
• Milgram collected qualitative data including observations such as: sweating, stuttering; as signs of tension
• Conclusion on Milgrams study: We obey legitimate authority even when they might cause harm to someone else
• Strength of Milgram's baseline study: replications have supported the study, e.g. a french documentary / game show paid contestants to give (fake) shocks, and the behaviours were almost identical. This supports Milgram's findings, and that they were not just due to special circumstances
• Limitation of Milgram’s baseline study: Orne & Holland argued that participants guessed the electric shocks were fake, so were ‘play acting’. This was supported by Perry’s discovery that only half the participants believed the shocks were real. This suggests that participants may have been responding to demand characteristics
• Limitation of Milgram’s baseline study: according to social identity theory (SIT), participants only obeyed when they identified with the scientific aims of the research (“the experiment requires that you continue”)
• Limitation of Milgram’s baseline study: Ethical issues; participants were deceived which can have psychological consequences
• Strength of Milgram's baseline study: The experiment was conducted in a lab, accurately reflecting wider authority (experimenter & participant relationship). Able to tell us how obedience operates in real life.