Burger (Contemporary)

• What was the aim?

  To investigate obedience by partially replicating Milgram’s experiment to examine whether situational factors affect obedience
• What did Burger change the test voltage to?

  15v
• How much did the ppts get paid?

  $50
• What was the maximum voltage that could be administered?

  150v
• Who was the experimenter?

  A clinical psychologist
• What was the sample?

  • 70 ppts
  • aged 20-81
  • mix male and female
  • Volunteers
• How many ppts stopped at 150v or earlier in the baseline procedure?

  12 (30%)
• How many continued after 150v in the baseline procedure?

  28 (70%)
• How many ppts stopped at 150v or earlier in the modelled refusal procedure?

  11 (36%)
• How many ppts continued after 150v in the modelled refusal procedure?

  19 (64%)
• What was the conclusion?

  ppts did obey and changes in society have not altered this. Although Burger cannot assume that all the ppts who went to 150v would go to 450v
• Give 2 strengths of the study

  1.Ethical Issues: put in several measures in place to ensure the well-being of his ppts

  2. Generalisability: sample more diverse in age, gender, and ethnicity- more representative
• Give 2 weaknesses of the study:

  1.Internal Validity: stopped at 150v and assumed ppts would have carried on but we dont know this for sure

  2.Mundane realism: lab-based on word-pair association which is not how we obey in real life.