Milgram’s research

• A study about obedience. Obedience is a type of social influence which causes a person to act in response to an order given by another person, the person who gives the order usually has power of authority
• How does obedience differ to conformity?

  obedience is doing as one tells you where as conformity is doing what others do
• Participants

  • 40 male participant
  • recruited through newspapers and flyers
  • ages between 20-50 years old
  • range of jobs
  • offered $4.50 to take part
• Procedure

  • Teacher, gave, fake, electric shocks to learner during a learning task order to do so by an experimenter.
  • When participants arrived at Milgram‘s lab, they were paid the money, and there was a rigged draw for their roles.
  • A confederate always ended up as the learner, while the true participant was always the teacher, the experimenter was also a confederate.
  • The experimenter could use 4 standard prods to make them continue giving the shocks when an incorrect answer was given.
• Conclusions

  • ordinary people would obey authority even if it went against their own personal beliefs
• Findings

  • no participants stopped before 300 volts
  • 65% went all the way to the top of the shock scale
  • many showed signs of stress but still continued
  • prior survey estimated that 3% would obey
• Milgram's findings have been used to explain why soldiers follow orders without question or protesting. This can be seen in the Nuremberg trials following WWII where many Nazi officers claimed they were just following orders. However, this defence did not work because they had free will to disobey orders. The Milgram experiments show how difficult it is to resist authority figures.
• Variations

  • the experiment took place in a run-down office rather than a prestigious university - obedience level became 47.5%
  • the teacher could instruct an assistant to press the switches - obedience levels became 40%
  • the experimenter left the room and gave the instructions by telephone - obedience levels became 20.5%
  • the teacher forced learners hand onto the plate - obedience levels became 30%
  • Given a “buddy” who refused to obey - obedience levels became 10%