Milgrim

• Obedience

  • a form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order, the person issuing the order is usually an individual with authority
• Milgrim (1963)

  • assess obedience levels
• Aim

  • to what extent people obey an authority figure even if it meant hurting someone else
  • wanted to understand the authority surrounding the holocaust
• Procedure

  • 40 American male men volunteered
  • took place at Yale university
  • told participants it was a test on memory
  • confederate was a learner
  • participant was the teacher — fixed draw
  • teacher gave learner an electric shock every time the learner made a mistake on memory ask
  • volts increased by 15v - 450v
• Findings

  • 100% of participants went to 300v
  • 65% of participants went to 450v
• conclusions

  • ordinary people are likely to follow orders
  • certain factors encourage obedience
• Generalisability

  • Only used white American males
  • has been replicated
  • used a volunteer sample
  • individuals less affected by situational pressures
  • study carried out in a lab and didn’t reflect behaviour in real life
• Reliability

  • replicated his own studies
  • replicated by Hofling and Bickman
  • all took part in the same condition and procedure
  • difficult to replicated due to ethics
• Application to real life

  • helps to explain the holocaust
  • explain why people engage in cruel behaviour
  • evil behaviour is situational rather than innate
• Validity

  • lacked experimental realism - participannts may have found it hard to believe the set up was real
  • Perry (2012) - interview participants - said they didn’t believe it wasn’t real
  • demand characteristics - may have not acted due to authority but pressure - paid to take part
  • lacked mundane realism
• Ethics

  • failed to gain informed consent
  • coerced participants into continuing with the experiment
  • difficult to withdraw
  • claimed to attempt to gain presumputive consent from the psyhcological study to predict the findings of the experiment
  • 35% did reject authority - was possible
  • did go through debriefing at the end
  • sent questionnaire to participants and 84% glad to have taken part