Evaluation

• Ethical issues

  • Deception - fake research
  • Right to withdraw - prompt prevented participants from withdrawing
  • Informed consent - Lack of information and some deception
  • Psychological harm - Psychological harm for teacher
• Weakness - Internal validity

  Oren and Holland (1968) - Claimed that participants have learned to distrust experimenters because they know they can be deceived

  Perry (2012) - Found that many of his participants were sceptical about the realness of the shocks. Milgram's research assistant divided the participants into two categories - 'Doubters and Believers'
• Weakness - Individual differences

  One criticism of this is that Milgram didn't consider individual differences

  a common assumption is that women are more susceptible to social influence than men

  Therefore, this should not have been a consideration

  Migram did one condition of his study with just women, but the tension they felt was much higher than men

  Rate of obedience was the same
• External Validity

  Many criticise Milgrams research as lacking external validity

  Many examples of human atrocities whereby people carry out horrifying orders without hesitation

  Would the same results be gathered if this was to be carried out today?

  Recent studies have demonstrated similar results
• Weakness - Cross cultural replications

  Miranda et al (1981) - Found an obedience rate of 90% with Spanish students, which concludes that Milgram's result are not limited to American male students

  Smith and Bond (1981) - claimed that Milgram's findings are only relevant to people in developed countries, and cannot therefore be generalised

  Kilham and Mann (1974) - Found that the obedience rate in Australia was 20% with the same experiment

  Mantell (1974) - Replicated the study in Germany and got an 85% obedience rate
• Weakness - The obedience alibi

  David Mandel (1998) - Argues that situation offers people an excuse / alibi for evil behaviour, he believed it offensive to suggest that Nazi's were simply obeying and were victims themselves
• Blasts and Schmitt (2001) - Showed a film of Milgram's study to students, who thought that the experimenter was to blame rather than the participant as he was the authority figure in the room