Milgram Stanley OG study - 1963

• Behavioral study of obedience investigates the level of obedience shown when participants are instructed to administer electrical shocks to another person.
• German are different hypothesis states that Germans have a character deficit that allows them to obey people in authority regardless of the act they are being asked to carry out.
• Dispositional attribution is the behavior of an individual is a result of an individual’s character or personality.
• Situational attribution is the behavior is a result of the situation the individual is in.
• The aim of the study was to investigate the level of obedience when participants were instructed to administer electrical shocks to another person.
• The method used in the study was a lab experiment with no controls, controlled observation method, and both types of data were collected.
• The sample for the study consisted of 40 males aged between 20 – 50 years old from the New Haven Area, and the participants represented a wide range of occupations such as doctors, nurses, salesmen, engineers etc.
• The study was financially incentivized with $4.50 for just coming to the lab regardless of study.
• The procedure in the study involved a phoney shock generator with 30 switches clearly marked in 15V increments.
• The experimenter in the study was the authority figure, the teacher was the participant, and the learner was the victim, who was a confederate of Milgram's, trained for the role and was not actually shocked.
• In the study, a "Defiant Participant" was a participant who broke off at any point prior to the highest level of shocks, and an "Obedient Participant" was a participant who went all the way up to the highest level of shocks.
• The data collected in the study was both qualitative and quantitative, with sessions recorded, observations carried out, and interviews conducted at the end of the experiment.
• The results of the study showed that 14 participants disobeyed the experimenter, 26 obeyed, 65% gave shocks up to 450v, and 35% stopped giving shocks sometime before 450v.
• Many participants showed signs of nervousness such as sweating, trembling, stuttering, and groaning, and 14 participants had nervous laughing fits.
• The study confirms situational attribution.
• The ethics of the study violated the right to withdraw as participants were pressured through prods in sequential order when they showed signs of discomfort and wanted to stop, and also incentivized at the beginning so may have felt pressured to continue despite feelings of discomfort.
• The study protected participants from psychological harm as well as physical harm, exposed them to test shocks at the beginning, and thoroughly debriefed them after the experiment.